The ability to operate effectively in business networks, be they coordinated or collaborative, is critical to sustaining competitive advantage in a commoditizing global economy. By focusing on their unique core capabilities, business network participants spend less on duplication and more on innovation, resulting in higher degrees of differentiation, greater customer willingness
to pay a premium, and thus higher returns on invested capital. Next-generation ICT systems allow these business networks to operate at global scale, but investment in them has been allowed to lag. As a result, enterprises in the developed economies are falling behind the curve, especially in comparison with their Asian counterparts. By focusing on the specifics of the type of network that is most important to their companies, and in particular on the type of metadata that will most greatly enhance their competitive advantage, business and IT leaders can radically improve these outcomes by making measured incremental investment that augments their existing infrastructure.