Work hard, play hard, network harder - is networking the new ‘hard graft’?

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘nepo-baby’; a rich kid with a perm given easy access to his father’s multi-million-pound business as a Managing Director from the get-go. Or a knockout daughter of a knockout model mother, seemingly by chance, making it onto the same fashionable runways. While we’ve all heard of ‘it’s who you know’ within these sorts of situations, how relevant is the phrase to everyday corporate life?