William Shakespeare said that the world is a stage on which men and women are the actors. In a similar way, a business network has a cast—a set of actors who are interacting with each other for some form of mutual benefit. We call these actors the participants in a business network. For example, the participants in an education network might be students, teachers, schools, colleges, examiners, or government inspectors. The participants in an insurance network might be policyholders, brokers, underwriters, insurers, insurance syndicates, regulators, or banks.

The idea of a participant is crucial to understanding business networks. You might find the term a little daunting at first, but there's really nothing to worry about. The key to understanding is in the name— participants take part in a business network. It's their actions that we are interested in. Different forms of the word are used to emphasize different aspects of their interactions: participant, party, and counter-party, for example. All these forms have their roots in the idea of action. As usual, we find that the bard knew a thing or two about how the world works!

Learn to love this word, because it's a door-opener! It's shorthand that you understand the founding principle of business—that who you do business with is of paramount importance. It's more important than this though; identifying the participants in a business network is the first thing that you do when determining whether there's an opportunity to benefit from the use of a blockchain. You need to understand the cast before you can really understand what's going on. And, as you learn more about the interactions between the participants, you'll be able to improve your understanding of what it means to be a particular participant.