Visualization as a step for better understanding the stakes of network evolutions : an exploratory design for entrepreneurship improvement

Résumé En

Personal network visualization is an inductive method of analysis that allows researchers who are familiar with it to "read" graphs and identify structural elements that are significant to their research questions, hypotheses and analyses in their discipline. This "reading", accompanied by categorizations and measurements of precise indicators, makes it possible to compare networks of different people and groups, but also to show the evolutions of networks over time. The graphs are therefore oriented by scientific questions.In the research protocols, there are sometimes stages of "feedback" towards respondents, who are shown these graphs, either to thank them or to record their reactions and evaluate the effects of this image on their apprehension of their own network. More rarely, it is a question of raising awareness of certain aspects of their network that can be discussed, or even oriented towards objectives oriented towards their own future rather than towards research. It is then not only a question of observing, but of advising and perhaps orienting the evolution of the personal network.From an interdisciplinary research (sociology and management science), we explore the potentialities residing in the visualization of entrepreneurs' network graphs along their business creation. The injunction to "do networking" is very insistent throughout this transition. But entrepreneurs and their advisers lack realistic knowledge about relational dynamics. Our aim is to set the theoretical and methodological foundations of a science-based method for advising entrepreneurs on networking. A graph visualization can help them better understand the resource opportunities, give a more integrated envision of the network structure and give a more meaningful content to the relational strategies that emerged. From empirical examples, we’ll discuss some outcomes of visualization, concerning for example effects of revelation of an overall structure, clarification of their specificities, confirmation of self and providing perspective of their surroundings.