William Shakespeare said that the world is a stage on which men and women are the actors. In a similar way, a business network has a cast—a set of actors who are interacting with each other for some form of mutual benefit. We call these actors the participants in a business network. For example, the participants in an education network might be students, teachers, schools, colleges, examiners, or government inspectors. The participants in an insurance network might be policyholders, brokers, underwriters, insurers, insurance syndicates, regulators, or banks.
The idea of a participant is crucial to understanding business networks. You might find the term a little daunting at first, but there's really nothing to worry about. The key to understanding is in the name— participants takepart in a business network. It's their actions that we are interested in. Different forms of the word are used to emphasize different aspects of their interactions: participant, party, and...