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Community

Short Description​

A Community is a party, consisting of at least two different parties (the members of the community) that seek to collaborate with each other so that each of them can achieve its individual objectives more efficiently and/or effectively. As a party, the community sets its own objectives that its members contribute to realizing, because the results thereof aim to facilitate their cooperation.

There is no fundamental difference between communities and other parties in the sense that they are all parties that set objectives and produce and/or consume associated results. However, the kind of objectives of a community is expected to serve the cooperation of its members, facilitate their collaborations, and remove any obstacles thereto. A community serves its members as they seek to realize their individual objectives.

Note however that this 'serving' implies that each of its members sufficiently contributes to the realization of the communities' objectives. This may be at odds with that member realizing its own objectives. A community would do well

  • to have objectives in place that support its members in handling such balancing acts,
  • realize that its members are parties, i.e. are autonomous entities that the community cannot control, and from there
  • manage the risks of (some of) its members not contributing their share of the work.

Note that a single set of parties can constitute different communities, the difference becoming apparent in the different objectives that the communities pursue, or by the fact that individual parties may join or leave one, but not the other community.

A community is a specialization of the more generic ecosystem in the sense that it is a party in its own right (which an ecosystem need not be), and it (actively) facilitates the cooperation between its members, whereas in non-community ecosystems, such cooperation is not actively planned or organized.

Purpose​

The purpose of having communities is to organize and optimize collaborations between parties that reduce their individual effort for realizing their individual objectives to a greater extent than the effort they must put into contributing to the community.

Criterion​

A Community is a party,

  • that consists of at least two different parties (its members);
  • that sets objectives for realizing results that enable its members to achieve their individual objectives more efficiently and/or effectively;
  • whose members contribute to the realization of these objectives.