Entrepreneurship as Networking: Mechanisms, Dynamics, Practices, and Strategies

In the world of business, who you know is usually more important than what you know. While most research highlights the personal characteristics and expertise important to business success, this book demonstrates that networking is the core of entrepreneurship. Both counterintuitive and powerful, this perspective reframes entrepreneurial action by placing networking at the center of the process.\nTraditionally, networks have been regarded as facilitators of business, but Tom Elfring, Kim Klyver, and Elco van Burg argue that networking is actually the basis of entrepreneurial action, and conversely, that entrepreneurial action is networking. In developing an "entrepreneurship as networking" model, the book addresses the persistent problems that plague the dominant "individual-opportunity" approach in entrepreneurship. They describe the key dynamics, mechanisms, and practices of entrepreneurship as networking, and point at fruitful networking strategies for entrepreneurs. Thus, the authors provide an integrated and dynamic account of entrepreneurial agency that prioritizes interaction with the surrounding social environment. They also explain what a viable network is for entrepreneurs and how networking activities affect their endeavours. Their perspective sheds new light on the origins of opportunities and how entrepreneurs access and mobilize resources. The approach also 
explains how entrepreneurs build legitimacy and exploit the networks they work within.\nOffering a groundbreaking theory of entrepreneurial action as networking, Entrepreneurship as Networking opens up an entirely new research agenda.

Business & Money

Elfring, Tom

Klyver, Kim

van Burg, Elco

Management & Leadership

Oxford University Press

In the world of business, who you know is usually more important than what you know. While most research highlights the personal characteristics and expertise important to business success, this book demonstrates that networking is the core of entrepreneurship. Both counterintuitive and powerful, this perspective reframes entrepreneurial action by placing networking at the center of the process. Traditionally, networks have been regarded as facilitators of business, but Tom Elfring, Kim Klyver, and Elco van Burg argue that networking is actually the basis of entrepreneurial action, and conversely, that entrepreneurial action is networking. In developing an "entrepreneurship as networking" model, the book addresses the persistent problems that plague the dominant "individual-opportunity" approach in entrepreneurship. They describe the key dynamics, mechanisms, and practices of entrepreneurship as networking, and point at fruitful networking strategies for entrepreneurs. Thus, the authors provide an integrated and dynamic account of entrepreneurial agency that prioritizes interaction with the surrounding social environment. They also explain what a viable network is for entrepreneurs and how networking activities affect their endeavours. Their perspective sheds new light on the origins of opportunities and how entrepreneurs access and mobilize resources. The approach also explains how entrepreneurs build legitimacy and exploit the networks they work within. Offering a groundbreaking theory of entrepreneurial action as networking, Entrepreneurship as Networking opens up an entirely new research agenda.

Entrepreneurship and Cluster Dynamics (Routledge Studies in Entrepreneurship)

Entrepreneurship and Cluster Dynamics focuses on the origin and development of clusters and specifically on the role played by the strategic entrepreneurship in these contexts. Although separately entrepreneurship and cluster studies have already attracted the attention of academics and practitioners; this book aims to go further and offer an integrated and interactive view of topics.  The cross-cutting approach is one of the main attributes of this book. In fact, the book involves a great range of organizational and economic perspectives, from social psychology to conventional applied economics disciplines. Moreover, these topics allow the use of different levels of analysis, from the individual entrepreneur behind a start-up to the structure of cluster networks, including the organizational levels. An analysis of the change and development of clusters going further than traditional functional approaches by examining how entrepreneurs and their actions are not only influenced by the cluster but also shape the cluster development, will offer an explanation of how entrepreneurship and networking entrepreneurs can foster, perhaps also inhibit, cluster development and change. Finally Entrepreneurship and Cluster Dynamics theorizes about the role of the strategic entrepreneurship in developing start-ups inside already established companies, which can play the role of broker in the cluster. Entrepreneurship and Cluster Dynamics offers a unique opportunity to academics, researchers, and students to learn about relations and interactions between entrepreneurship and cluster perspectives, providing both newly and original theoretical propositions and also rigorous conclusive empirical exercises.

Molina-Morales, Xavier

Industries

Routledge

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