About Us

RSM Erasmus University - joined by a network of leading companies and universities across the world – has taken the initiative to develop the ‘next wave’ of management theory and practices, based on Smart Business Networks.

SBNi is a part of The Network Foundation - a registered institution under Dutch Law.

1. Who form the core of SBNi?

In the SBNi Core Committee are:

2. What is our mission?

SBNi will have completed a sufficiently comprehensive management concept which specifies:

How technical smart (=value adding) networks can impact strategy development and implementation, and how it can lead to improvements in operations.
How smart organizational networks, supported by technical interactive communication networks, can be designed and operated such that additional competitive advantage is developed.

3. How did the initiative start?

In May 2004 at Kasteel de Vanenburg the idea for founding SBNi was born. Scientists from management and strategy, information systems, engineering and telecommunications discussed a novel concept: Smart Business Networks. They see the future as a developing web of people and organizations, bound together in a dynamic and unpredictable way, creating smart outcomes from quickly (re-)configuring links between actors. The question is:

What should be done to make the outcomes of such a network 'smart', that is, just a little better than that of your competitor? More agile, with less pain, with more return to all the members of the network, now and over time?

The technical answer is to create a 'business operating system' that should run business processes on different organizational platforms. Business processes would become portable: The end-to-end management of processes running across many different organizations in many different forms would become possible. From the seminar held at Kasteel de Vanenburg a book was compiled.

4. Would you like more information?

Download the SBNi leaflet here or contact us.