Download Free The Network Challenge Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Network Challenge and write the review.

While managers typically view business through the lens of a single firm, this book challenges readers to take a broader view of their enterprises and opportunities. Here, more than 50 leading thinkers in business and many other disciplines take on the challenge of understanding, managing, and leveraging networks.
Telecommunications is a networked business, yet it traditionally has resisted a network-based view in its strategies and business models. In this chapter, Kevin Werbach explores this paradox, contrasting the worldview of Monists such as AT&T, who see the infrastructure as inseparable from the network, and Dualists such as Google, who see the network and its applications as distinct from the underlying infrastructure. Not surprisingly, AT&T is a proponent of “tiered access” whereas Google argues for “network neutrality.” Finally, Werbach examines how a more modular future might bridge the gap between those who seek to own and capitalize on the network and those who seek to expand it through more neutral offerings.
As terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda have been transformed from hierarchical organizations to more fluid networks, countering terrorism requires an understanding of networks. These networks evolve rapidly in response to actions to thwart them, leading to an ongoing struggle of terrorist and antiterrorist networks. In this chapter, Boaz Ganor examines the evolving threat of terrorist networks and network-based responses. As he notes, “it takes a network to beat a network.” He also examines direct and indirect implications for business organizations.
Networks increase interdependencies, which creates challenges for managing risks. This is especially apparent in areas such as security and enterprise risk management, where the actions of a single player in an interconnected network can wreak havoc on everyone in the network. The network, in this case, is only as strong as its weakest link. There are related problems in encouraging investments for prevention and protection, because the expected payoffs from such measures by one player are affected by the actions of other players in the network. This chapter examines the challenges of interdependent security (IDS) and strategies for addressing these, including coordination with broader networks such as industry organizations and government.
As manufacturing supply chains have moved from vertically integrated factories to diffused networks, manufacturers need to manage complex, global webs of suppliers. In this chapter, Netessine examines supply networks in two industries in particular: automobiles, and aerospace and defense. He explores how different strategies and technologies have helped companies manage, organize, and capitalize on their networks of suppliers. He discusses how Japanese automakers have used partnerships to outperform their U.S. rivals, who have taken a more adversarial approach to their suppliers. He also considers how companies such as Airbus and Boeing have used technology to coordinate and integrate far-flung networks. While Netessine notes that the formal study of network-based supply chains is just emerging, he offers insights from research and practice on the growing importance of supply networks and strategies for managing them successfully.
Biology remains the most extensive and complex information network on the planet. This chapter examines the nature of biological networks, including their inherent stability and risks to their resilience. After a general introduction exploring networks and biological systems, this chapter reviews (1) the evolution of biological networks; (2) principles that govern biological networks; and (3) measures of stability, productivity, and efficiency in biological networks. The authors use examples from food (energy) transfer in rainforests and coral reefs, as well as the creation of a biological network through colonization in Darwin’s Finches of the Galapagos Islands. Research shows that while large biological networks are inherently unstable, some are more stable than others.
Most companies realize the need to “look outside” for innovation. However, few have a clear understanding about how they can make such a shift toward network-centric innovation--an innovation strategy that is centered on external networks and communities. Managers need more than anecdotal success stories about externally focused innovation, and they need more specific guidance than the “one size fits all” prescriptions of open innovation. The authors argue that every firm needs to find its own roadmap for tapping the “Global Brain”--the creative potential of the world outside its four walls. There are many different approaches and opportunities for network-centric innovation, based on the nature of the innovation space and the nature of network governance. In this chapter, the authors present a framework for structuring the landscape of network-centric innovation. They describe four models of network-centric innovation--Orchestra, Creative Bazaar, Jam Central, and MOD Station--and outline how companies can select, prepare for, and pursue the approach that best fits their particular business and innovation context.
Infectious diseases are complex, interdependent events that can be described as networks over enormous scales of time and distance from the molecular to the societal, from the local microenvironment to the global stage. In this chapter, Teh and Rubin argue that meeting this challenge effectively requires a solution that engages networks. This network-based perspective must inform not only the development and distribution of drugs and vaccines for infectious diseases, but also the development of strategies of primary prevention that use the knowledge of such networks to disrupt and limit disease spread. In this review, they analyze infectious diseases in the context of the networks underlying the evolution, establishment, and propagation of disease. They also review the network-based analyses for modeling disease spread and allowing a better understanding of the counter-interventions needed. Finally, they outline the future challenges in this area and propose a collaborative international solution based on a “global compact” that will allow effective diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of infectious diseases.
The locus of innovation is shifting from the firm to the network. In contrast to developing standalone products, innovators are drawing together networks that deliver a personalized, co-created experience to the customer. This chapter describes a model in which nodal firms link communities of customers with communities of prequalified vendors. It examines cases from cardiac pacemakers to addressing diabetes and explores the implications of this shift for product and service innovation, value creation, and new sources of competitive advantage.
Although networks in key business areas such as communications, supply chains, R&D, and sales are designed to improve the flow of information, people, or goods, they can also be used to improve the “peripheral vision” of the organization. In this chapter, the authors examine how networks can be used by organizations to scan, sense, and adapt to new and important signals from the organization’s strategic environment beyond its core focus. The first part of the chapter emphasizes the importance of peripheral vision in helping organizations not being blindsided by threats while seeing new opportunities sooner. The authors examine some key obstacles to using networks to better mine the periphery for early insight. They then explore how extended networks can help the organization be a responsive open system adapting faster to changes in the environment. They examine to what extent network constructs such as centrality, hierarchy, self-healing, distributed intelligence, multihoming, and latency can be used to improve organizational networks for scanning the periphery. The last section explores some of the leadership challenges associated with using networks to detect weak signals sooner.