“Flexible business networks combine independence with. . .”

Flexible business networks combine independence with interdependence. They pool resources and capabilities to obtain the benefits of scale and diversity. By cooperating, small firms can play effectively in the global market. Their flexibility and swift responsiveness to change provide a global competitive advantage. Network flexibility comes from many small entrepreneurs able to make quick decisions and to act immediately to accommodate change. These benefits apply not only to manufacturing networks, but also to business networks of all descriptions, whether product-based or service-oriented. . . A flexible manufacturing network is a group of firms that cooperate in order to compete—that collaborates to achieve together what each cannot alone.’

Every flexible business network definition we’ve seen contains the cooperation/competition duality in some form. ‘A network is the cooperation and the mechanisms of cooperation that allow a small company to compete successfully with the best of the large,” Denmark’s legislation reads. . .

Clusters are credited with fundamentally turning around the Danish economy. In 1990 the country was depressed and small enterprises could not compete. By forming a dozen clusters, collective innovations and resources fundamentally changed the economics. Today Denmark is the only European country with trade surplus with Germany.