Business Commons^™

Foundations As Network Strategists, Weavers, And Managers: Learning From One Foundation’S Journey And Results, Clare Nolan, Brian Souza, Michael Monopoli, Marianne Hughes

The Foundation Review

This article shares insights from a five-year evaluation of the Oral Health 2020 network, an effort by the DentaQuest Foundation to align and strengthen efforts in service of a national movement to improve oral health. The evaluation helped to place the foundation’s journey in the context of a broader field seeking new approaches to achieve deep and sustainable social change.

The foundation’s approach was informed by several ideas that have gained momentum in the social sector, including collective impact, networks, systems change, and equity – all of which challenged the foundation to take a nontraditional approach that combined the roles …

The Rise Of Project Network Organizations: Building Core Teams And Flexible Partner Pools For Interorganizational Projects, Stephan Manning

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

This study shifts attention from project-based firms (PBFs) to project network organizations (PNOs) as increasingly important interorganizational contexts of project collaboration. As a result of organizational specialization, PNOs have emerged as generic organizational forms combining the coordination capacity of PBFs with the resource richness of networks. PNOs connect legally independent, yet often operationally interdependent individuals and organizations in strategically coordinated sets of core project teams and flexible partner pools that sustain beyond singular projects. Based on an empirical review of PNOs in film, event organizing, construction, complex product and system development, research, open innovation and international development, core features, antecedents …