This is an interview with an employee of a machine tool company in which he discusses the operation and mission of the company. In doing so, he highlights the importance of co-operation between networks of firms and people in order to achieve high quality products and satisfaction. The machine tool company employs six technicians who use a combination of electronics, electrics and hydraulics (mechatronics in fact) to produce bespoke industrial machinery. Their target industries are food and metal (especially aluminium). The company is very flexible and prides itself on the complete service they offer clients; from inception they are involved with everything to do with production (even including project management!) right up to commissioning and installation. In fact, they also provide a comprehensive maintenance service, so they are actually involved right up until the machine is decommissioned! To provide this all encompassing service it is necessary that they have a good relationship with a number of other firms. For example, they need a wide variety of suppliers, including those specialising in metal, commercial parts, software and electrical devices, and they also need to contract out the painting and the final presentation of the machines.
This service, tailored as it is to customer needs, results in high quality products and satisfaction, and is consequently forever enhancing their reputation amongst, current and potential, clients.

This clip demonstrates the value of networks from the point of view of a garment cutting company; an employee of the company is interviewed. He describes how all his company's business comes to it from major design names and that consequently all the work his company does is according to another firm's instructions. The graphics and the patterns come to them ready prepared and printed out. They also receive the fabric, which is cut using automatic machines, and the accessories to finish an item. He believes his company is capable of being involved with design but are just not quite ready yet; they need a lot more investment. Investment would allow them to buy their own high quality fabric. Until then, they have to stick to working for firms that supply them with all the materials. This is not a completely negative outcome; this way means they have less responsibility, and thus crucially less liability, with which to contend. This clip also shows how what starts as a partnership with learning from other companies means that over time a company may move into a position where it could take on a wider range of tasks and move upthe value chain.

This time we are shown how valuable networks are to a software development company. (The company examined is incubated by one of a development agency's initiatives: affordable starter premises. Companies are only eligible for this if they have a feasible business idea and plan, have employees of an age to support a culture of apprenticeship and are dedicated to innovation). An employee of the software company explains the company's name and then the software development in which they specialise. They specialise in software which provides manageable user interfaces for complex automated machines/programmes programmed by the XP method. They create this 'supervision' software for a variety of applications, such as sales machines, geographical mapping and pocket PCs. This wide and varied network of clients affords the company confidence and security not enjoyed by companies supplying just one type of product. As well as this confidence and secuirty being intrinsically desirable, it puts the company in a sufficiently stable position to consider joint ventures with other companies. Joint ventures are yet another example of a beneficial network: they facilitate expansion, growth and stability.

First there is an interview with an employee from a company which has benefited from the development agency's initiatives. He sings the praises of the agency's efforts and the necessity of support for young innovators. He believes the agency provide a great opportunity for young people with good ideas; the biggest problem in the business world is not a lack of good ideas but the lack of support available for developing those ideas. He continues that the support the agency offer extends beyond the obvious. For example, by providing starter premises the clear benefit with which the agency supplies the SMEs is very affordable rates (these help to keep their costs, and crucially their start-up ones, low) but in this provision of premises they also offer another more subtle advantage: they ensure that all the SMEs accepting of their help are in one geographical location. Thus, they are all in receipt of an excellent opportunity for young, smart and like-minded innovators to meet and share ideas. He is of the opinion that this sharing of ideas and networking will go some way towards ensuring that these SMEs decide on the right paths for both individual and collective success. He concludes a positive future awaits SMEs in the Ferrara region.
Second there is an interview with an employee of the agency. She urges her audience to never under-estimate the importance of networking, however over-used the word might have been. She has learnt this lesson from experience. For example, she argues her agency could never have constructed the SME-incubating environment that they have without the networking that facilitated agreements with universities, local authorities and entrepreneurial associations.