Relationships

In the Relationship window, you discover connection paths to millions of executives and companies in the g2 Database. You can also find the connections from any executive in the database to another executive or company. To open the Relationship window, click the Relationships tab in the g2 window.

The following example finds the connections between an invented g2 user, John Smith, and an actual executive in the g2 database.

1. Type the executive's first and last name in the To: input boxes.
2. Click SEARCH.
3. Choose the executive in the Alternative Connections pane and click ADD.
4. Click CONNECT in the MAP RELATIONSHIP pane.

The results are displayed in the RELATIONSHIP PATHS pane. The picture below shows several relationship paths to the executive Steven Jobs. Note: g2 displays many other relationship paths that are not shown in the picture.

If there are many relationship paths, it is usually convenient to group them by companies and executives, as explained in Grouping Results.

Relationship Paths

A relationship path is a chain of people, starting with yourself (or an executive in the g2 database) and ending at the targeted executive or company. Each person has a direct connection with the next person in the chain. As an example, look at the relationship path shown below.

The path contains the following executives:

1. The first executive is George Reyes, whom John Smith has listed as one of his affiliated executives.
2. The second executive is Ann Mather, has a connection to George Reyes through Google Inc., where Reyes is Senior Vice President and CFO. Mather is currently on the Board of Directors of Google.
3. The third executive is the targeted executive, Steven Jobs, who has a connection to Ann Mather through The Walt Disney Company, where Jobs is on the Board of Directors. Mather was formerly a Senior Vice President at The Walt Disney Company.

You can click the names of the the executives in the Relationship Paths pane and look at their professional biographies to see their common organizations.

The following diagram illustrates this relationship path.

The degree of a relationship path is the number of people on the path from you to the targeted executive, not counting yourself. The example above is a third-degree relationship path.

Note: The numbers in parentheses in the RELATIONSHIP PATHS pane tell you the number of relationship paths of degree one, two, or three.

Finding Relationships to Companies

You can search for your relationships to a company by selecting Company in the To: field and entering the name of the company in the Company field. You have a first-degree connection to any of your affiliated organizations.

Relationships Through Affiliated Organizations

Besides having a first-degree relationship to any of your affiliated executives, you also has a first-degree relationship to anyone who has worked for one of your affiliated organizations. For example, if John Smith has specified Bose Corporation as one of his affiliated organizations, he has the first-degree relationship shown below.

Grouping Results

If a relationship search returns many paths, you can group them by companies and executives. To do so, click GROUP RESULTS at the top of the RELATIONSHIP PATHS pane. The results are grouped into folders, as shown in the example below.

Each folder contains a group of relationship paths:

• The "Affiliate" folder contains the paths that begin with one of John Smith's executive affiliates.
• The "Bose Corporation" folder contains the paths that begin with executives at Bose, which John Smith has listed as an affiliated company.
• The "Generate Inc." folder contains the paths that begin with executive affiliates of John Smith's co-workers at Generate Inc.

You can click any folder to expand the relationship paths it contains, as shown below.

The numbers to the right of each folder show the number of relationship paths leading from that folder to the targeted executive.

Refining a Relationship Search

To specify options for a relationship search, click REFINE RELATIONSHIP SEARCH at the top of the Relationship window.

You can specify the following options in the lower pane:

• Executive affiliations - g2 uses only your executive affiliations, but not your organization affiliations, to find first degree connections to executives. If you select this option, g2 ignores your organization and peer affiliations.
• Peer affiliations - g2 uses only your peer affiliations to find second-degree connections to executives. If you select this option, g2 ignores your executive and organization affiliations.