“The entrepreneur networks with a view to mutual exchanges, not manipulation.”
Entrepreneurs and the Development of Networks: The Key to Sustainable Entrepreneurship
The entrepreneur of this century is driven, in their projects of creation, takeover, or business development, by dreams, desires, willpower, patience, and perseverance. These qualities make them autonomous, creative, curious, capable of taking initiatives.
Ethical, sustainable, and solidarity-based entrepreneurship is growing in both discourse and practice. It involves project-based operations that allow for stakeholder involvement, integration of cross-functional activities, and customer orientation.
Is the entrepreneur an expert in everything?
Entrepreneurs seek information to understand and anticipate market trends, seize business opportunities, innovate, and differentiate themselves in order to acquire and retain competitive advantages.
For this, entrepreneurs need a wide range of skills, both specific and cross-functional. However, must they be an expert in everything? No. Of course not. But they need to surround themselves with expertise to create, develop, and sustain their business(es). Thus, they collaborate, find partners, financiers, clients, suppliers, by building networks.
Or an expert in networking
Networks? The term is shrouded in a sulfurous aura: mafia networks, community networks, humanist networks, espionage networks, various clubs of influence, information or disinformation, economic intelligence, lobbying. What is the reality? A network is simply: “a set, real or virtual, of interconnected people who have or may have an interest in mutually helping each other.”
Neither Talleyrand nor Monsieur Jourdain, the entrepreneur networks with a view to mutual exchange and not manipulation. They set objectives and do not consider networking as something obvious or natural. The entrepreneur is aware of the Maussian principles of giving and receiving that it implies. They surround themselves with people who resemble them (as observed in the development of ethnic or community entrepreneurship), in a win-win relationship, and build long-term relationships. They not only have real or potential interests with members of their network, but they also share values, perspectives, and common tastes.
From a practical point of view, entrepreneurs can find partners, associates, clients, suppliers, various assistance, information, and business opportunities in their close circles: family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, associations, sports clubs, various clubs, alumni, ethnic, religious, sexual, cultural communities, humanist aid networks, and professional networks and federations.
The entrepreneur’s capabilities
In these different circles, the entrepreneur must be capable of approaching anyone, having prepared an introductory speech allowing them to introduce themselves in 30 seconds, and finding elective affinities with their interlocutor in less than two minutes. This requires a good understanding of oneself, others, presentation techniques, persuasion, rhetoric, and negotiation skills.
Furthermore, the entrepreneur must be able to understand the rituals, semantics of the different worlds, environments, sectors in which they operate. As Crozier would say, they are a secant marginal, capable of connecting members and able to understand diverse ways of seeing, thinking, and acting.
Networking venues and opportunities are numerous and varied, allowing for the enrichment or maintenance of personal networks. This network, through capillarity, allows for the realization of any project: one is never more than five handshakes away from anyone in the world.
Becoming a Networking Entrepreneur
This networking entrepreneur as presented in this article is not just an ideal type. It precisely corresponds to a trend of behaviors, profiles that are emerging, but also being shaped, notably within the Higher Program in Entrepreneurship at Advancia.
By Yannick Le Guern, professor within the Higher Program in Entrepreneurship (PSE), Head of the Student Entrepreneurs Club at Advancia, Coach within the Advancia Incubator and the International Summer School of Young Entrepreneurs (EIEJE), and also an entrepreneur.
