megacommunity – Jeremy Gregg

Thanks to Greg Hirsch for connecting me to this article, a segue from our revolutionary plottings with Stacy Caldwell:

The Megacommunity Manifesto
by Mark Gerencser, Fernando Napolitano, and Reginald Van Lee

8/16/06
Public, private, and civil leaders should confront together the problems that none can solve alone.

"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."

Read the full article here:

http://www.strategy-business.com/resiliencereport/resilience/rr00035

Thanks to Stacy Caldwell at Dallas Social Venture Partners for connecting me to the Megacommunity Movement:

http://megacommunities.com/

From the site:

The megacommunity recognizes the necessity (and power) of business, government, and civil society working together on global issues.

A megacommunity is a new approach to solving problems which span business, government and the communities in which we live.

A megacommunity is:

the space in which complex problems exist, and are addressed
an collaborative environment where leaders interact according to their common interests, while maintaining their unique priorities
a lens through which we can examine a complex problem in a new way
determined by the existence of tri-sector engagement and an overlap in common interest

A megacommunity is not:

another form of public-private partnerships
another name for corporate social responsibility or philanthropy
another variation on conflict resolution
another international/intergovernmental forum
a really big community of interest
a collection of like-minded actors

The objective for each organization operating in a megacommunity is achieved by optimizing its interests instead of maximizing, all participants gain. Best of all, operating in a megacommunity is not a zero-sum game

The Critical Elements of a Megacommunity
There are five critical elements. The first two, tri-sector engagement and an overlap of vital interests, can be thought of as preconditions.

Tri-Sector Engagement must be present in any megacommunity; the noticeable difference between megacommunities and other public-private partnerships is the civil society component, and the ‘open nature’ of the engagement – specifically, not focusing on just the elements the parties can agree on to tackle together, but also those areas that they may not have common ground to work in tandem
Overlapping in Vital Interests describes the aspects of any particular issue of which all members have an individual interest – hence necessitating their involvement in the megacommunity

The other three elements, convergence, structure, and adaptability, are critical features of the megacommunity design. An initiative that takes them into account has a far greater chance of success than an initiative that ignores them.

Convergence is the commitment to mutual action that all members must work toward; no member can exist in a megacommunity with the intent to disrupt or undermine the effort
Structure describes the set of protocols and organizing principles that must exist to allow for converged commitment on the overlapping vital interests – this structure resembles a scale-free network
Adaptability is necessary for the megacommunity to function effectively and make progress on the issue itself, and on the individual interests of the participants – adaptability allows the network to be scalable and flexible

Tag: megacommunity

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The Megacommunity Manifesto

Megacommunity Thinking

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