Networks & Digitalisation
Why access is the hardest currency
There are enough ideas. What is missing is usually the door: access to the right people, at the right moment. Access is the hardest currency in business.
27 July 2026 · 4 min read
The idea is rarely the problem
In the Mittelstand, a good idea rarely fails on its own merits. It fails because no one knows the person who could carry it forward — the partner, the buyer, the successor.
Those who have that access hold an advantage long before any numbers are discussed.
A network is not a mailing list
Collecting contacts is easy. A network is something else: a community in which each person is genuinely needed and in which trust circulates — not just business cards.
The difference shows when it matters: a mailing list stays silent, a network answers.
Access can be shared
The real value of access lies in opening it. Whoever brings the right people to one table creates more than any single transaction.
That is what is meant by treating networks as a craft: setting the tables at which ventures begin to move.
Access is not bought but earned — and its value grows the moment you share it.