Full Circle Associates

This article by Joe Cothrel from 2000 is an oldie but a goodie. I didn't realize it was online at Knowledgeboard.
Measuring the Success of an Online Community.

"Contrary to popular belief, community ROI is not about 'monetizing' community members or performing other unnatural-sounding acts. . . . [I]t is about putting a process in place for recognizing the value that online community members create."

I often struggle when people talk ROI (return on investment). When we start talking about how we measure success, and other forms of value, we enter a discussion where we can include more than a monetary measure for a form of human interaction that just happens to be online.

Look at the recent Gartner report which notes,

"IT needs to reinvent itself from being focused on cost driven initiatives and instead help key employees create higher impact growth objectives that promote business agility through non-routine activities, according to Gartner, Inc.

"Raising productivity by cutting the cost of production time is running out of steam," said Tom Austin, group vice president and Gartner Fellow. "To increase competitive advantage, organizations need to look for opportunities to increase market impact, including value and agility, by investing in a high-performance workplace."

Sounds like culture change to me, aided by technology and processes.

There is more of interest in the Gartner report, including this snippet:

Five technologies have a significant role in innovation programs. They include content and knowledge base management, expertise location, search and classification, collaboration support, and business and competitive intelligence.

"Collectively, these technologies provide information access; relationship mapping across multiple sources of information; patterns and trends information; and tools to allow people to find each other, connect and collaborate," Mr. Austin said. "The collective benefits of these technologies can be measured as high productivity, increased idea generation, and improved relevance and quality innovation program deliverables."

A high-performance workplace will enhance the structured and unstructured activities that are key to creating competitive advantage, driving long-term, top-line growth and enhancing productivity.

"High-performance workplace strategies raise the impact of skilled people," Mr. Austin said. "Skilled workers earn more and companies want more from them. Ultimately, the returns from augmenting non-routine activities will exceed the returns we've seen from automating business applications."

online_community, virtual_community, Joe_Cothrel, ROI