As my students this week revisited their inventory of means (who they are, what they know, who they know) in the context of the specific enterprise ideas they are developing, I was struck by how much they focused on the potential for exploiting their weak ties into viable partners for the enterprises. “I recently met the guy who….” Or “I know the president of the ID student organization…” or “The owner of the place where I work also….” The next day, we coincidently hosted a talk by Paul Bonin-Rodriguez that focused largely on how network theory can be used as a tool for cultural policy analysis especially with regard to funding for minority-serving arts organizations. He described the five characteristics of networks. I was immediately struck by how these characteristics are also reflected in the entrepreneurial process, especially as being undertaken in m class:

• Dispersed control
• Interaction
• Non-linearity
• Adaptation
• Perpetual novelty

Still processing this connection….more to follow.

[image: Social Network Analysis Visualization by Martin Grandjean, CC 3.0]