Community and Crowd (C&C) is the second Attribute in the SCALE acronym. In Chapter 3 of Exponential Organizations you can read more about this and I suggest taking a look at the open source tool developed by the ExO Ecosystem.
Side Note: You may be wondering why the ExO Ecosystem is making so much of the tools open source and available and this is because we all want to share this knowledge in line with out MTP’s which all revolve around making a massive impact on the planet and this will only be possible in an open and collaborative manner.
I believe that Community and Crowd is a fundamental attribute and do not believe that you can actually be an ExO if you do not leverage this attribute as part of your organisation. As the diagram above shows, the community is everyone in the inner circles of core team, users, fans, partners, etc. and then the crowd is everyone else. You have to engage both and move people from crowd to community. C&C is important as it increases loyalty; drives exponential growth; validates new ideas and learning; allows for agility and rapid implementation and amplifies ideation.
With regards to a community to can initially join a community and then grow out your own or start with your own. When joining another community it is vital that you are adding value to that community. In Exponential Organizations they outline three steps to building a community:
- Use your MTP to attract and engage early members
- Nurture the community
- Create a platform to automate peer-to-peer engagement
I would add a fourth step which is to make data driven decisions from what the community is sharing. The community needs to benefit all and make a difference, so being able to take the ideas and discussions from the community and implement action in a data driven way is essential.
The crowd is consists of people outside of the core and is much larger than the community. The crowd can be used in creativity and innovation, validation as well as for funding.
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