Convenors of Capability
A community center founded in Hurricane Katrina’s wake shows how megacommunity efforts can bring people the help they need to rebuild.
This strategy+business article documents the work being done at the Hope Community Center in Biloxi, Mississippi. It is a focal point for businesses, not-for-profit organizations, and government agencies offering help to people recovering from Hurricane Katrina.
The rebuilding of East Biloxi is the kind of problem that presents too much complexity for the government sector, the business sector, or civil society to tackle alone. It calls for an entirely different approach. The solution to such problems may well lie in designing and implementing new types of in-depth collaboration among related organizations in all three sectors, or what we call a "megacommunity." Leaders in a megacommunity cannot hope to control the situation unilaterally; they must learn how to work together.
The Hope Center also shows that there is something to be learned from every emerging megacommunity. Each example like this contributes to an expanding experience base. The problems faced by cities such as Biloxi may well grow more complex during the next few years, but by working on them in a megacommunity fashion, we can meet these challenges with a greater collective capacity for sustainable solutions.
Booz Allen Hamilton's Michael Delurey and David Sulek are the authors of "Convenors of Capability."
story posted March 26, 2008
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