Community as a form of collaboration

Bounded rationality furnishes the theoretical basis for collaboration. When problem complexity is overwhelming, divide-and-conquer is often an effective problem-solving approach. For many years before the Internet got so convenient, collaboration takes place within the department or the corporation. Communities formed within the organizational boundary, when operating with momentum, unit more brain power into a great value-producing system. The communities that involve the whole world, as radical as it seems, have been demonstrated to be a great business thinking for some companies in certain sectors.

Open innovation through various types of community has captured much attention of mass media. IBM joins effort with the open source software community and puts linux and Apache at the center of their core products. A significant portion of new products produced every year is the result of networking with people they did not hire. Counting amazon, eBay. jeep drivers, Mac users, ..., you'll notice that community, like knowledge, is everywhere. Can one imagine several years ago that community management would turn out to be a core competency of managers and organizations in the knowledge economy?