quantify this

Greater Cleveland Partnership - Partner Network -- Ed Morrison's post yesterday on BFD about Dublin, Ireland, has me thinking. Does Dublin have a beautiful network structure like this? (Click on the link, go to the GCP Network Chart, and interact with it for a while.) When assets and other things go in one end of this beast, to feed it, what then comes out, and where, and how? How do you quantify what's going on here? Who ever tells us about results, beyond the creation of a new link, a new preference, an new entity, a new appendage in the sprawling COSE/GCP network? What gets spent, and what results happen, in what time frames? How do you measure any of this? Or, do you just give up, sit back, and feel good, trusting that we and our community are in good hands?