(co-authored with Kate Isaacs)

Early last month, the Vatican named Pope Leo XIV to lead the Catholic faithful. The elevation of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was a surprise pick. Chicago-born, Prevost had spent most of his career as a missionary in Peru and became a cardinal only in 2023.

But the selection of Pope Leo was foreseen by three scholars from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.

These scholars—Giuseppe Soda, Alessandro Iorio, and Leonardo Rizzo—applied social network analysis methods to one of the most closed institutions in the world: the College of Cardinals.

“Our starting point is simple,” explained Professor Soda. “Even in the Church, as in any human organization, relationships matter. The more connected, listened to, and central an individual is in the flow of information, the more likely they are to become a unifying figure.”

As their website explains: “The research team reconstructed a multilevel model of the ‘Vatican network’ using three main sources:

• Official co-memberships (Roman curia dicasteries, commissions, councils, academies): these data reveal who works with whom and in what institutional contexts.

• Lines of episcopal consecration: each cardinal was ordained by others, and these “spiritual genealogies” build strong bonds of loyalty and recognition.

• Informal relationships: mapped through authoritative journalistic sources, these include ideological affinities, mentoring relationships, and membership in patronage networks.”

With this methodology, the group produced an extensive network map of the College of Cardinals and were able to show that Cardinal Prevost ranked exceedingly high on “status,” measuring cardinals who were connected not only to many decision makers, but to the most influential ones.

The Papal research shows the evolution of Network Science and its ability to use sophisticated methods to analyze complex “relational ecosystems.”

All of this makes intuitive sense. Each of us has a web of relationships that are rooted in the places where we grew up, the schools and universities which we attended and the firms and occupations which shaped our professional lives. We have all learned how to mobilize these relationships to advance the professional careers of not only ourselves but also those with whom we have shared critical experiences.

The chaos and complexity of the current period demands that we take Network Science to the next level and find ways to use it as a collective endeavor.

Network Science matters immensely in a federalist system, where decision making is distributed across multiple layers of government and sectors of society. Cities, metropolitan areas and states, unlike the federal government, are powerful precisely because they are networks of institutions and leaders bound by trust and common purpose. This creates a platform for public, private and civic institutions and leaders to work together and continuously co-design projects, organize capital and deliver results.

Networks of institutions and leaders in cities and other places can maximize the possibilities of Network Science by taking three linear actions.

First, set a concrete challenge or opportunity.

Readers of this newsletter will notice a repeated focus on tools that can either unlock a community’s distinctive competitive assets and advantages (e.g., Investment Playbooks, Procurement Playbooks), mitigate scale backs in federal investment (e.g., Stress Tests) or solve wicked challenges (e.g., Housing Action Plans).

In each case, the area of focus naturally implicates different sets of local stakeholders and actors who interact with each other in complex and intricate ways. Metropolitan business alliances, major corporations, advanced research universities and state and local economic development corporations or agencies often lead Investment Playbooks. City and county governments, universities and nonprofit health care and service agencies often lead Stress Tests. And so on.

In other words, Network Science is best applied in particular rather than general settings.

Second, map the ecosystem.

Once a problem or opportunity statement is established, network mapping can proceed.

Increasingly, there are web-based tools like https://netmap.wordpress.com or https://kumo.io/ to help us reveal the web of interactions that define modern economies and places.

Cities should build from these tools and create customized network maps that are focused, actionable and aligned with the impact sought.

Here is an example to illustrate the point. Cities and metros across the United States are now scrambling to leverage their distinctive strengths in a economy that is rapidly remilitarizing, reshoring and undergoing an accelerated phase of technological advancement.

That presents different opportunities in different places.

In St. Louis, the confluence of major national security assets (e.g., Boeing, the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency and Scott Air Force Base) and the happenstance that major tech founders (e.g., Sam Altman of Open AI, Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey of Twitter and Square) grew up there leads to a distinctive kind of network map.

In Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University’s position as the number one AI university in the world and the dispersion of its alumni through major government agencies, large prime contractors and new AI startups enables a radically different network map.

In Hampton Roads, the U.S. Navy’s outsized presence (e.g., the Norfolk Naval Station, Newport News Shipbuilding) has created intricate relationships across current and former senior leaders in this exclusive club and a vast ecosystem of government entities, private companies, investors and universities.

This is network mapping with a purpose, namely, to use relationships forged through place, university or employer ties to attract investments, recruit more companies and expand or relocate special governmental and research units.

Network mapping, in short, is not an academic exercise or clever visual. Relationships matter and can help expose economic possibilities and drive economic growth during a turbulent period.

Finally, empower networked organizations and “network connectors.”

Network mapping, of course, does not lead to results by itself. Rather the tool becomes actionable when certain kinds of institutions and individuals act with focus and discipline.

This, then, is the real governance challenge before cities, metropolitan areas and states.

If relational ecosystems are going to realize their full potential, the nation needs stronger city and metro governance. Many of the institutions built in the 20th century to govern and finance cities are simply inadequate for the task ahead. Major metropolitan areas in the United States and beyond are now compelled to ask whether they have the organizational structures, governance bodies, collaborative networks and people with the right skills to succeed in the shifting global economy.

In the end, successful cities and metros will need public, corporate and civic organizations that can set bold visions and strategies, leverage substantial capital and deliver transformative results again and again. They will require government, business, civic, philanthropic, university, and community networks, rather than the public sector alone, to collaborate to forge solutions that are holistic, integrated and multidisciplinary and raise, pool, and deploy capital from an array of local, state, national, and even global sources.

The ability to succeed is not equally present across all US cities and metros. A relatively small number of places, like Columbus, Syracuse and Phoenix, have well-capitalized, general-purpose business and civic leadership groups that are already driving structural economic shifts. Other places, like Hampton Roads and Pittsburgh, have recently rebooted existing organizations or created new special-purpose strike teams to take advantage of their distinct competitive assets.

But institutions are not sufficient. Successful cities and metros now need special kinds of people, network connectors, who can move fast, work across and knit together fragmented constituencies and catalyze transformative change. These individuals are emerging around the country, bridging silos, building trust, spotting opportunities and delivering results. Hampton Roads and Pittsburgh are forging ahead because they have remarkable connectors (e.g., Doug Smith at the Hampton Roads Alliance, Joanna Doven at the Pittsburgh AI Strike Team) leading key organizations. It is time to name and elevate this new class of leadership and, to the greatest extent practicable, distill common attributes so their impact can be spread and scaled.

The recent research on the selection of the Pope Leo XIV revealed the superpower of relationships in our messy, chaotic world. That revelation can be truly impactful if it is matched with institutions, intermediaries and practitioners capable of using networks to maximize opportunities and steward communities through these volatile times.

Bruce Katz is the Founding Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University. Kate Isaacs is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School for Management.