The Megacommunity Way: Mastering Dynamic Challenges with Cross-Boundary Leadership

Experts define the megacommunity concept and explore the places where it is making a difference.

Sometimes it takes a conscious and concerted effort, orchestrated from many sectors of society, to solve an unavoidable problem.  This type of initiative is known as a "megacommunity™" — reflecting the fact that it is a community of organizations, not of individuals.

More and more problems around the world will require a megacommunity strategy, but until now, nobody has articulated that strategy clearly. More importantly, we are just beginning to realize how to mobilize the necessary leadership and overcome the organizational and cultural challenges.

The following strategy+business magazine articles explain this new approach and demonstrate how it works in a variety of settings, with the hope that it will provide for meeting the increasingly complex challenges of our increasingly interdependent world.

• "The Megacommunity Manifesto," by Mark Gerencser, Fernando Napolitano, and Reginald Van Lee lays out the rationale and basic methods underlying the approach.
• "When There Is No Cavalry," by Douglas Himberger, David Sulek, and Stephen Krill Jr. explains how a megacommunity approach can make all the difference after a serious natural disaster like a hurricane — drawing in particular on Florida’s successful preparedness efforts after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
• "HP Engineers a Megacommunity," by Barbara Waugh describes the university relations effort that led the Hewlett-Packard Company to forge unprecedented alliances with a variety of private, public, and civil sector partners in Africa to develop the next generation of female engineers.
• "Lights! Water! Motion!" by Viren Doshi, Gary Schulman, and Daniel Gabaldon describes the crisis in urban infrastructure that calls for a megacommunity-style solution.
• "The Defining Features of a Megacommunity," by Chris Kelly, Mark Gerencser, Fernando Napolitano, and Reginald Van Lee explains the critical prerequisites and features that allow this social structure to work.

These articles all represent a starting point for thinking about complex challenges from a megacommunity perspective. And they provide a road map for navigating to more successful action, whether you are starting in the public, private, or civil-society spheres. 

These articles have been published in a Reader from strategy+business magazine entitled The Megacommunity Way: Mastering Dynamic Challenges with Cross-Boundary Leadership.

story posted August 23, 2007