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The Definition of Networking: What Does It Really Mean?
The classic definition talks about "using your contacts". In 2021 we proposed changing that verb, and adding a tail end to it. Reading it back today, that proposal was the first sketch of what later became a discipline with a name and six laws.
Published 14 July 2021 · revised 16 August 2026
The first correction
Activate, no longer use
The definition networking entered the business world with goes like this: the process aimed at using your contacts to grow your business, improve your knowledge and expand your sphere of influence.
Almost all of it holds up. Using doesn't. Almost nobody means it with bad intentions, but the verb carries a mindset with it, and mindsets show up in behavior before they show up in words.
The difference between the two verbs
Using is a one-way street: something I do to someone.
Activating implies a mutual commitment, a give and take. It's a verb that describes two parties instead of one.
And the old image still holds: good networkers are more like farmers than hunters. Relationships are cultivated, and people's time is respected.
The second correction
And then: serve the community
A self-respecting entrepreneur cares about the person in front of them. That person is a person just like they are, and the work exists to improve something for them.
A sales process isn't one-sided: it's a dialogue in which both parties look for the best outcome, and it often means guiding someone toward the choice that's right for them — which sometimes isn't yours.
Hence the rewritten definition: the process aimed at activating your contacts to grow your business, improve your knowledge, expand your sphere of influence and, in doing so, serve the community.
One word at a time
What that definition became
Five years later, the two corrections proposed here each have a name of their own. That's not a coincidence: they were the starting point.
"Activate" became a discipline
Treating valuable relationships as a designable, measurable system is called Relational Engineering (Ingegneria Relazionale, coined in Italy). The difference with relationship marketing is exactly that verb: relationship marketing uses the relationship to sell to a target, here there's no target at all and value flows in both directions.
Which requires establishing who moves first, because otherwise nobody moves at all (First law), and accepting an imbalance by design: Dispari, Second law.
"Serve the community" became a model
It's called the Spherical Economy, and the metaphor is precise: in a sphere there are no corners and no edges, every point is equidistant from the center — and at the center there's no individual, there's the community.
That's the difference with the circular economy, which brings things back to the starting point. Here value doesn't come back: it redistributes.
In 2021 it was a proposed definition. Today it's a Charter with six laws.
The first step
Where your company stands, in one number
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