The power of community in the collaborative era
Posted by Janice Scheckter on 16 March 2016, 05:50 CAT
If your business, organisation, NPO, municipality, city or initiative does not have a well-defined community today, you’re missing multiple opportunities. Community is at the very core of the collaborative era and smart businesses are harnessing the power of community to co-create and crowd source.
These two concepts are not necessarily the same. In Leading the Revolution, author Gary Hamel said, ”If you want to see the future coming, 90% of what you need to learn you’ll learn from outside your industry.” Co-creation with your community promises insights that may otherwise have been missed or overlooked. Companies also understand that this reduces the risk of innovation while increasing ideation flow and velocity.
Over the past month and a half we shared our six big B2B trends for 2016. ‘Community co-creation’ was trend number six and it’s possibly the most important one right now, but without a community that buys into what you’re about, you have little chance of achieving this.
In January I spoke at Pecha Kucha Joburg in January of this year and shared a case study on city collaboration. The case study highlighted Mexico City, with the highest populace in the western hemisphere and where, because of this, public spaces are becoming vital. Also, MIT Media Centre ran a project to improve Pueblo de Libertad, a major city square.
Rather than engaging city officials, spatial development experts and the like engaged citizens. They treated every citizen like an expert and they adopted the most popular requested improvements.
Initiatives that show early success in community building are those that make the shift from the ‘me first’ mind-set to the ‘we first’ mind-set and that embrace real things that matter.
Finally, communities engage where there is shared purpose and authenticity. Don’t discount the kind of community that may drive engagement but be clear that the core value remains shared purpose.
Janice Scheckter is co-founder and MD of Indigo New Media. Their audacious purpose is to change the world, one community at a time.
