If your company is to be the best it can possibly be, a smart approach is to tap into resources outside of your organization. A “community” allows you access to the best and brightest people — whether they work for you or for someone else. In the near future, as companies increasingly focus only on their strengths and outsource everything else, they’ll have mostly partners and very few competitors.
The fact that you are reading this article is clear evidence of your recognition of the power of a community. I am continually amazed by how much can be done with only a little once you build a community.
If you are a member of a community and contribute even occasionally, you probably know very well that more gets done there than in your office. The added advantages are that one doesn’t have to wait 12 months before the next annual meeting, nor is there any limitation on where the participants live and at what time of the day they contribute.
The power of community
Imagine what can happen if a company can exploit the power of a community. One reason why companies fail to come up with world-class approaches is that their current mindset does not allow them to tap into resources outside of their organizations. If a company could build a community of all the right people — regardless of their affiliations — to achieve a specific goal, it will not only be possible to achieve that goal faster but also do it profitably.
I make this recommendation for one simple reason: no company is as good by itself as it is by partnering with others. A community allows you to get the best and the brightest people whether they work for you or for someone else. At the same time, the knowledge that you collect is also shared with other community members and benefits everyone.
Of course, like any other community, members like to be rewarded for their contribution. If businesses build communities, rewards can come through recognition, financial benefits or any other reward that the members desire. I may even recommend developing proprietary technologies through a community approach; in this case membership would have to be restricted to strategic partners, and more formal structure would have to be implemented.
Information flow
There are a couple of other reasons why I suggest a community approach to doing business today. In the old economy, the word “customer” had a narrow meaning — someone who used your product/service and paid for it. The flow of information and goods was so slow that companies had no choice but to control as many transactions in the value chain as they needed to be able meet their market commitments. This made them categorize other industry participants as either customers, suppliers or competitors.
In the new economy, the distinction between buyers/sellers, manufacturers/consumers, and partners/competitors is disappearing. This is because information flows so fast that it is not only possible to quickly identify potential suppliers and partners but also to look at their inventory levels in real-time and manage production/supply schedules accordingly.
In the near future, I can see that enterprises will be focusing only on what they do best and outsourcing everything else. Thus, a company will have mostly partners and very few competitors.
Building a community
To build a community, a packaging company has to do three things like any other community:
• First, develop a vision for the community. For instance, the foremost goal for a commercial enterprise is to have high revenue and net income, but it could be something different — for instance, to develop a solution to a long-unsolved problem.
• The second step is to bring together the right members to the community. This is needed in order to have the necessary skill base.
• The final step is to facilitate seamless communication among the community members. Since the members may interact mostly virtually and may not know each other very well, the initial roadblocks should not discourage the members.
Packaging companies are better off than companies in many other industries in the sense that once the product is sold, the design and testing professionals on both sides continue to collaborate on a regular basis. On the down side, however, other than these individuals and an occasional courtesy call from the sales representative, there is not a lot of interaction on a corporate basis to address larger issues.
Such relationships with its customers should be exploited by a packaging company since, otherwise, the value of knowledge that is developed regularly within and outside the enterprise is not being fully exploited.