ABSTRACT
This chapter examines in more depth the processes and causes of network success and failure, defined in terms of the ability of the network to become a sustained and valued form of business activity for its members. It discusses four different case-study network initiatives as follows: a failed informal ‘new entrepreneurs network’; a successful informal ‘local cluster group’; a failed formal ‘defence contractors network’; a successful formal ‘small-firm technology group’. The case-studies are not proportionately representative of the overall success and failure of network initiatives, but were chosen to provide further insight into the actual processes concerned with building and sustaining of networks through policy intervention. Local cluster groups consist of a number of self-help networks that have been successfully piloted by a Training and Enterprise Council in the West Midlands. The network was formalised by the setting-up of a marketing umbrella with its own ‘network identity’ and the signing of a confidentiality agreement.
