The Networked Experience

ENABLING SMART BUSINESS: increasingly companies are organising as dynamic networks rather than as hubs in near-to-static value chains. Digital techologies enable new ways for organisations to combine to create new value by making their business networks “smart”.

The “smart business network”, rather than the individual smart business, will increasingly determine competitive capabilities. SBNs enable organisations to combine in agile and effective business networks to apply relevant capabilities to meet their individual customer requirements.

The growing abundance and linking of digital business and personal networks is already challenging traditional business models and stimulating new requirements for, and applications of, business science.

This, the 3rd international SBNi meeting, will combine business and science to explore and examine the concepts and practices of smart business networks under the theme “ The Networked Experience”.

Scope of “The Networked Experience”

The Networked Experience concentrates on:

Smart: the networked combinations of businesses and capabilities which create distinctive advantages not commonplace today;
Business: delivering new measurable business value in terms of sustainable profitable positions; and
Networks: beyond the static value-chain – a dynamic networked collective that produces economic value.

From science it draws on traditional and emerging disciplines including social network analysis, graph theory, complex systems analysis, modularity, swarm intelligence models and economic theory.

For organisational and business disciplines SBNs impact marketing and sales capabilities, e-business, information systems and strategy, social networks, value chain dynamics, outsourcing models, agile manufacturing, and service creation and delivery across all industries.

We invite contributions presenting research outcomes and business experiences within this scope. We invite academia and and business to compare, and benefit from, their understanding of why “being networked” is so important: their conclusions from research and experience and their prognoses for the impact on business and society.