The answer to the above question has been proffered by Ronald S. Burt, a Hobart W. Williams Professor of Sociology and Strategy at University of Chicago School of Business. In his paper, http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/ronald.burt/research/SHGI.pdf, Burt proposes that one does not have to come up with a brilliant innovation in order to become creative but simply recognize the potential of an existing idea that can be reused. This existing idea comes from the networks that the individual is a part of. The fundamental element of his account is a structural hole which he defines as a gap between two individuals with complementary resources or information. When the two are connected through a third individual, the gap is filled, creating important advantages for the third person who now has the “power to reuse (produce) a good idea”. This suggests that creative people are often bridges between diverse networks. They use the knowledge that is not valuable to one community and apply it elsewhere where it is deemed exceptionally valuable. In this manner, they exploit their social capital to earn a competitive edge. As an example, the significance of these special nodes finds its mention in the recruitment concerns for the student project teams at Cornell University:
http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/student-services/learning/student-project-teams/resources/testing/future-years.cfm

In addition, the notion of third parties filling in structural gaps can be compared to weak bridges in social and corporate networks. The weak bridges serve as primary channels for information diffusion among diverse groups. Since the nodes forming these bridges stand to earn most of the information and control benefits, Burt claims that social structures enable competition by creating specific opportunities for certain people and not for others.

An interesting extension of his theory can be seen in its application to gender inequalities. Burt’s research shows that even though women are more comfortable in a small circle of supportive mutual friends while men are drawn to the rough and tumble of an entrepreneurial network, the sizes of their social networks are approximately the same. The gender inequality observed in senior ranks is, then, a result of the dynamic distribution of these social networks. Men tend to compartmentalize their networks; in the process of which they create multiple structural holes that they themselves serve to fill. They can have separate sets of ‘poker buddies’, ‘golf buddies’, ‘beer buddies’ etc. and these can be mutually exclusive groups. Women, on the other hand, tend to introduce their friends to each other, thus increasing the coefficient of redundancy in their networks and reducing the possibilities of acting as fillers. His research proves that women end up borrowing social capital from their colleagues in order to rise in rank. Competitive advantage, therefore, is not just dependent on the extent of one’s social network but also on the access to the so called structural gaps that are either inherent in the social fabric or are created artificially.