Identifying Influential Nodes for Smart Enterprises Using Community Structure With Integrated Feature Ranking

Finding influential nodes reshuffles the very notion of linear paths in business processes and replaces it with networks of business value within a smart enterprise system. There are many existing algorithms for identifying influential nodes with certain limitations for applying in large-scale networks. In this article, we propose a community structure with integrated features ranking (CIFR) algorithm to find influential nodes in the network. First, we use the community detection algorithm to find communities in the system, and then we rank the nodes of network based on three factors, namely local ranking, gateway ranking, and community ranking, collectively termed as integrated features. Our algorithm intends to select influential nodes, which are both globally and locally optimal, leading to overall high information propagation. We perform the experimental results on total eight networks using various evaluation parameters. The obtained results validate superior performance against contemporary algorithms adding value to smart enterprises.