Creating organizations and networks to support innovation

Abstract

It is widely recognized that successful entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs demonstrate their strength in networking and using their network to gain business advantage. In networking one of their key strengths is an ability to form relationships with people of diverse backgrounds and a wide range of capabilities. They then exhibit great skill in using these networks to help solve the challenging problems they face in developing sustainable businesses. But more than this, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs often need to form strong relationships with companies in the form of alliances and partnerships in order to achieve their ends. Clusters, based on common interests such as a shared commercial sector, seem to offer a more formalized grouping than do networks, and they offer certain attractions to the innovative firm. Entrepreneurs exhibit skills, not only in identifying the need to engage other individuals and businesses in appropriate forums, but also in exploiting these relationships at the appropriate time. Within any innovation team there is the need for strong networking skills, and recognition of the need to spend time fostering, maintaining, and capitalizing on networks.