Summary

In this chapter, we've been introduced to business networks and explored them in detail. By understanding the key components of participants, assets, transactions and events, we've seen that in some sense all business networks share the same concerns.

By classifying the different types of participants—individuals, organizations, systems and devices, we are able to properly describe who initiates transactions that capture change in the business network. By understanding the concept of an asset—a thing of value, whether tangible or intangible—we were able to describe and understand the resources that move between participants, and how they express the reason participants interact with each other. Understanding participants and assets allowed us to understand how changes to these are captured in transactions. And finally, concept of an event allowed us to understand when significant change to the network happened, and act upon it.

We spent a few moments discussing how these concepts are...