Emerging Organizational Strategy: The Mega-Community

Admittedly, I'm late to the party on this one but I recently came across a report from Booz Allen Hamilton published last summer called The Megacommunity Manifesto. It outlines how some public, private and civil leaders are uniting to confront together the problems that none can solve alone - through a larger system the authors call a "megacommunity."

From the report:

"A megacommunity is a public sphere in which organizations and people deliberately join together around a compelling issue of mutual importance, following a set of practices and principles that will make it easier for them to achieve results. Like a business environment, a megacommunity contains organizations that sometimes compete and sometimes collaborate. But a megacommunity is not strictly a business niche. Nor is it a public–private partnership, which is typically an alliance focused on a relatively narrow purpose. A megacommunity is a larger ongoing sphere of interest, where governments, corporations, NGOs, and others intersect over time. The participants remain interdependent because their common interest compels them to work together, even though they might not see or describe their mutual problem or situation in the same way."

Up until now, I've viewed the role of the NGO as that bridge between public and private. But according to the report, NGOs are just another cog in the wheel. (Great quote from former CEO of Habitat for Humanity Paul Leonard: "We've had blinders on. We need to change course, to become more of a partner and a player; more knowledgeable about the large systems that exist and the role we can play in them.")

Through several examples, the report outlines the requirements for a successful megacommunity - leadership being at the forefront. Counter-intuitively, there are no CEOs of megacommunities. Rather, it's the quality of leadership within the various members organizations, that makes the difference. "Megacommunities thrive when leaders have a mind-set of optimization." (I like how Jon Lebkowsky over at WorldChanging describes it as a contemporary approach to tribal organization.)

To see a megacommunity in action, I recommend reading Chris Kelly's piece on convening the HIV/AIDS India summit in 2003. Chris writes about the seemingly insurmountable hurdles it took to coordinate a unified approach for combating HIV/AIDS in India There were over 200 participants representing many different stakeholders. To make the challenge even more daunting, participants held no common view of how to stop the spread of the disease. The solution - they conducted a wargame: "a strategic simulation to engage participants at a deeper level than could have been achieved in a traditional conference or workshop." Although far from an easy process, in the end, the participants generated ideas for 54 partnerships focused on more than 100 programs. Based on the simulation’s metrics, Kelly estimated that similar real-world measures could ultimately prevent 40 million cases of the disease over the next 20 years, with a combined estimated impact of more than $31 billion in regained GDP.

Here at the Business Innovation Factory, we're about to participate in the launch of our own megacommunity focused on Education. Through an alliance with The Big Picture Company, we'll be creating an experimental platform for testing new approaches in education.

It all kicks off on May 10 when the Big Picture Company hosts a diverse group of industry and thought leaders and educational innovators from across the nation together in Providence to plan a series of symposia that will take place over the course of the 2007/2008 school year. Designed to provoke actionable outcomes, the symposia will draw upon a network of partners and stakeholders committed to exploring optimal learning environments and create a forum for highlighting best practices and aggregating best thinking. The Big Picture Company will use the symposia as a platform to influence national education policy, create dynamic new learning products to be used by students, educators, and communities, and to advance their mission of transforming learning across the U.S.

From the concrete designs and initiatives derived from the symposia, collaborative projects will be shaped and resourced through our Student Experience Lab, to be tested in real-world conditions. The outcomes of these experiments—successes and failures—will be shared, evaluated, and used as a basis for promoting system-wide change. Because fragmented solutions, although ripe with possibility, are not sufficient to generate the kind of large-scale innovations so many of us are trying to achieve.

We're thrilled to be part of this fantastic opportunity. And stay tuned. It's a great time to join the conversation. And if you're interesting in learning more about becoming a BIF member, head here.