#Community and Crowd

“Are you primarily a community or are you primarily a company? The reason you have to ask yourself this is because sooner or later the two will come in conflict.” —Exponential Organizations, First Edition

In the previous chapter, we discussed the importance of non-employee, on-demand, contract staffers as a critical new resource to help enterprises better innovate, operate, and adjust to sudden changes in the vastly accelerated Exponential economy. We went so far as to suggest that without Staff on Demand, no company could succeed in this economy, much less become an Exponential Organization.

But there’s another non-traditional asset, an even larger cache of surplus cognitive talent, that may prove even more important to an ExO than Staff on Demand. What’s more, the expertise and talent of this asset is provided voluntarily, without any contract—and, often, without a paycheck. This is the all-important “Community” and “Crowd,” the subject of this chapter.