Alliances

This blog describes the sixth step in the NOBO Virtuous Circle. It considers how knowledge workers in value networks build alliances.

The Internet enables knowledge workers to consider alliances as a new kind if strategy opportunity. The value proposition of an alliance is collaboration for a common good. "Participants form a community that designs or makes useful things, creates and shares knowledge, or simply has fun together" writes Don Tapscott et al in the book "Digital Capital:Harnessing the Power of Business Webs". Alliances represent not the usual commercial sense of the word but more sharing and development of collective intelligence.

How do you guide these alliances? This article by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder describes seven principles on cultivating communities of practice:

• Design for evolution - because communities of practice are organic, designing them is more a matter of shepherding their evolution than creating them from scratch.
• Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives - effective community design is built on the collective experience of community members.
• Invite different levels of participation - people participate in communities for different reasons—some because the community directly provides value, some for the personal connection, and others for the opportunity to improve their skills.
• Develop both public and private community spaces - dynamic communities are rich with connections that happen both in the public places of the community—meetings, Web site—and the private space—the one-on-one networking of community members.
• Focus on value - rather than attempting to determine their expected value in advance, communities need to create events, activities, and relationships that help their potential value emerge and enable them to discover new ways to harvest it.
• Combine familiarity and excitement - lively communities combine both familiar and exciting events so community members can develop the relationships they need to be well connected as well as generate the excitement they need to be fully engaged.
• Create a rhythm for the community - the rhythm of the community is the strongest indicator of its aliveness.

The next blog describes the seventh and final step in the NOBO Virtuous Circle. It takes a look at how thriving alliances leads to social computing.