I've read on numerous boards that in order to improve PR on 2nd tier pages (anything but the homepage, let's say) that you need to generate a fair number of inbound links to those pages.

I assume that means 3rd party (re: not my site) links to those pages. That makes sense, but I'm not sure how many people can realistically and deliberately generate a great deal of links to a 2nd tier page. At least not enough to make them worthwhile.

Can internal links make up for the deficiency? Are they meaningful? I've read a bit about PR distribution as well. Just wanted to hear some fresh dialogue on the topic.