Managing Professional Network - case: HämePro -network

Abstract

The purpose of the thesis was to find suggestions and recommendations for the HämePro -network management and development, so that the network could be more active and function more widely in the future. The customer of the thesis, the Regional Council of Häme, is the leader of the HämePro -network. The network consists of the regional development organisations from Kanta-Häme region and it is an unofficial expert network, which main task until now has been the participating to the regional strategy work. The network was found in 2007 for the strategy work at that time but in 2009-2011 the operations got down until the network was activated again lately. So the target for the thesis was to find operation suggestions for the network to avoid these troubled waters.

The answers for the objectives were started to find out through examining the theory which consisted of the networking in general and the network man-agement and essential issues according to these. Also there was executed a questionnaire survey to the HämePro -network actors and the leader of the network was interviewed for gathering the background material.

When observing the network background and current situation and reflecting that to the theoretical literature, there were found four main recommendations to develop the network actions and guaranteeing the functionality. The rec-ommendations were creating a present state analysis, executing an operations model together with the actors, discussions with the actors about the network structure and possible updating; for example inviting new members, and also building a web based platform which essentially includes the producing of the foresight information that is strongly connected to the regional development.