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This chapter focuses on business and industry networks. All six facets of knowledge networks are described. Three of the six facets have particular importance for these networks, specifically domain, relationships, and how messages are managed and controlled. The authors provide six network profiles, including health care industry networks, fashion industry networks, technology industry networks, food production industry networks, building industry networks, and transportation industry networks.

This chapter describes capacity building as a general concept and as a networking capability specifically. There are two essential components to building capacity. The first is building the network capacity, building relational capital, and sharing knowledge. The second is building the capacity to support knowledge network analyses. The authors offer a set of key questions for determining the health of networking capacity at the strategic, operational, and individual levels. The chapter also describes the roles and competencies required for network analysts, managers, and general employees.

This chapter focuses on the treatment and characterization of networks as an emerging discipline. Networks are defined. The authors call out and explain the importance of network domains, network geographies and topologies, network behaviors, network nodes, network links, relationships and flows, and network messages. While network sciences provide a strong foundation for research and analysis, the authors note the lack of knowledge networks. This chapter highlights the need to expand coverage to include knowledge networks.

This chapter explores the role of messages in knowledge networks. Messages are characterized in terms of the type of knowledge they represent and their attributes. Messages represent knowledge transactions in a network. The authors describe the type of message in terms of the knowledge capital it contains. The chapter considers what is involved in making all forms of knowledge capital available, accessible, and consumable in a network. Making knowledge available involves articulation – semantic, linguistic, visual, acoustic, and kinesthetic. Making knowledge accessible means encoding the knowledge, formatting, and packaging it as a message. The chapter also addresses factors that influence knowledge consumption, including coherence, completeness, verifiability, usefulness, relevance, orientation, freshness, and redundancy. The authors also provide examples of messaging human, structural, and relational capital.

This chapter explores the role of nodes in knowledge networks. The authors characterize knowledge nodes by the type of actors they represent, including individual human agents, collective human groups and teams, explicit non-human objects and resources, and non-human agents and machines. The authors define knowledge nodes by their role in the network, including producer, consumer, or broker of knowledge, and in terms of the stock of knowledge they represent and their capacity to absorb knowledge made available in the network.

In this chapter, the authors highlight the emerging discipline of network sciences and the evolution and adaptation of human networks. The change is considered in the context of a shifting economic landscape and the importance of knowledge in the twenty-first-century knowledge economy. The chapter offers a fundamental definition of networks and explores the shifting geography of networks. Specifically, the authors explore door-to-door, place-to-place, and person-to-person network geographies. The authors model economic systems as networks and explain the role of human, structural, and relational capital as nodes, messages, and links in networks.

This chapter focuses on community and social group networks. All six facets of knowledge networks are described. The importance of three of the six facets is called out, including geography, domain, and the messages exchanged across the network. The authors provide profiles of five networks, including family networks, neighborhood networks, issue and support networks, community organization networks, gangs and criminal networks, and sports and gaming networks.

This chapter focuses on network links as knowledge flows and relationships. Knowledge links are defined as channels for communicating and distributing knowledge. The literature on network links is aligned with the literature on knowledge sharing, transfer, exchange, and appropriation. This chapter focuses on the peculiar attributes of knowledge network links. The authors identify the attributes to include a link’s direction, length and distance, strength and durability, concentration and congestion, velocity and impact, meaning and intention, and the coverage and spread. The authors also describe standard configurations of knowledge networks.

This chapter explains how to design and operationalize a knowledge network analysis. The authors walk through a nine-step methodology that addresses each stage of the process. The nine-step process is the result of an in-depth review of the theoretical and applied literature. The authors explain how and why each step contributes to the quality and goodness of the analysis. The risks of skipping or sub-optimizing steps are explained. The step-by-step process highlights the dependence of a knowledge network analysis on data sources. The authors explain the importance of identifying, collecting, and curating sources.

This chapter focuses on networks comprised of explicit data sources and information and non-human machines as actors. As non-human actors, we include intelligent agents, robotics, and other forms of interactive artificial intelligence. All six facets of knowledge networks are explored. Given these networks’ peculiar nature, three facets have particular importance, including geography, topology, and relationships. The authors provide profiles of seven networks, including semantic and citation networks, webpage networks, communications and computer networks, and energy grids.