It’s hard to question the superiority of networks for activities such as collaborative learning (type “communities of practice“), experimentation with new cultural approaches, idea generation, or to mobilize in favor of some collective claim.

But what happens when the challenge is to put many people to work together to achieve certain results respecting deadlines and costs, and also do it by cultivating an ongoing relationship . I’m talking about “productive” and “stable” networks, that is, a reticulate model without organic links, which poses work for projects within deadlines and that the result can effectively overcome the company.

In my experience, these conditions can only be fulfilled if we conceive networks of higher order, more than “ordinary networks“, and therefore we would have to call them differently, to distinguish them from those based on weak ties structures, which are good to encourage creative and random connections, but not to serve goods and services, or manage complex projects. Read more ›

In this post I would like to share an idea that seems to me quite complex: Are networks better than companies? Is it true that the “transaction costs” have collapsed so much to make the “network” a superior alternative to the “enterprise”?

Well, once again, let me say “that depends”: The networks are not always more agile than firms. It is rather the opposite: usually it happens that they involve a great complexity of relationship management. Yes, a robust and well-oiled network can be more agile than a versatile firm; okay … but to achieve this is not easy at all.

It hurts me to recognize that networks that work well and are agile, are still an exception rather than a rule. They serve to share ideas and to promote the exchange of knowledge, but when it comes to make a joint effort and carry out the distributed work, a lot of inefficiencies jump out.

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