Eight Network Design Decisions
There are two primary creation stories for networks of organizations or individuals seeking to achieve a social-impact goal. In one, the network bursts into life out of an unpredictable mash-up of like-minded people who share a problem, get together to see what will happen, and then invent a common path forward. They share a belief that pooling their resources and collaborating might get them what they want, but they don’t know what they’ll do together. In the other, the network is managed carefully into existence, the result of analysis, planning, and negotiation. The founders initiate the process to achieve more impact by getting organizations to collaborate. In either case, to engineer or support a collective effort, network organizers have to analyze the problem they want to solve and its causes, and determine who should be involved in solving it, what they should do together, and how to do it. We have identified eight design issues that network builders should address during the start-up process. For each issue, there may be many options and there’s no one right choice—there’s the choice that is right for the network you’re building. Some of the issues also re-emerge later in a network’s life at points of transition, or persist from startup to finish. Successful networks are designed—they don’t just happen. Knowing a network’s essential design issues is a crucial part of the practice of building effective social-impact networks.
The following table links network design questions with guidance for how to answer them effectively.
