Business Networking

3

NETWORKING ACROSS ORGANISATIONAL BOUNDARIES

DOI: 10.4324/9781003026549-4

Introduction

This chapter looks specifically at the role of organisations set up to enable networking to occur: the reasons why networks are set up purposefully and how to optimise their success. Networks can take many forms, from the unboundaried and fairly inchoate forms of the personal networks of individual actors to highly structured and defined networks set up with a clear core mission. It is this latter type of network that is the subject of this present chapter, with a particular interest in network organisations whose mission is to speed up innovation. We will call these formal or managed networks. This chapter will consider:

• The reasons why such networks ...