Defenders of Belief vs. Seekers of the Truth – A classification of communities based on members
A lot of people are looking for a good classification system for communities, or some sort of community hierarchy. Most of the ones that we have seen so far (including some we tried to develop as part of the Tribalization of Business and our upcoming book, the Hyper-Social Organization) are rather lame – descriptive at best.
We finally came up with a high level distinction between communities and tribes based on how they deal with diversity – and would love to hear what you think. We believe that understanding this distinction is key in determining the value that a community or tribe can bring to your business.
On the one hand, you have communities and tribes that are populated with people who share a common belief. They prefer to hang out with people who share that belief. We call them defenders of belief. They frown upon diversity and operate much like a religious group would. Business communities and consumer tribes that fall in that category can be found everywhere – think of the Apple zealots, who would not want to be caught anywhere near a PC owner, or the Ducati motorcycle riders, who certainly don’t want to be confused with Harley riders.
On the other hand you have communities and tribes that embrace diversity – within certain limits. We call them Seekers of the Truth. They realize that the best solutions come from diverse groups of individuals, and not from groups with a common sense of belief – let latter often causing an echo-chamber effect or groupthink. Commercial communities and tribes in that category include cross-industry professional affinity groups, like IBM’s global CIO community, and software developer communities, like the SAP developer community that we discussed in chapter 1 – where people are willing to help one another and share even with competitors in order to find the best solution in a timely manner.
Why is it so important to understand this distinction? For starters, if you are looking for input into your product innovation process, a community full of defenders of belief would yield pretty poor results. If your goal is to involve customer tribes as part of designing new products, you need a community of people who are seekers of the truth, embrace diversity, and enjoy a good difference of opinion. The more diverse your community is the better the products they will co-design with you. Some companies, like Intuit, will go to embrace what many would consider extreme diversity – inviting not just their customers and prospects but also their detractors as part of the process.
If on the other hand your goal is to increase word of mouth through communities and tribes or leverage the power of the crowd to help you with customer service, then having communities full of defenders of belief can work – and in some cases will work even better than with seekers of the truth.
What do you think? Please let us know as we refine our thinking…
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by francois gossieaux, comunidades. comunidades said: Defenders of Belief vs. Seekers of the Truth – A classification of communities based on members: A lot of.. http://bit.ly/gRSSP [...]
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 pm
[...] of all three genders (That got your attention) Some are quiet philanthropists and others are Defenders of Belief vs. Seekers of the Truth – A classification of communities based on members – emergencemarketing.com 10/23/2009 A lot of people are looking for a good classification [...]
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 pm
A new type of psychographic perhaps? Suppose another type of group or community was populated by people, say women with newborns who relied on a brand(s) or product(s)to help them get through various aspects of motherhood, from managing a family, caring for a newborn and participating in the broader community of other young mothers. Product is seen as an enabler to accomplish some end goal. “Doers looking for support” perhaps? There might be a broader schema here that encompasses various dimensions of consumer wants, needs and requirements. http://www.twitter.com/morristed
October 24th, 2009 at 11:50 am
I feel it’s irrelevant and overly hypothetical in nature. It’s impossible to predetermine who falls in which category and you can’t really create a strategy that will attract seekers of truth over defenders of belief.
Also the notion of co-designing is fuzzy. Surely you don’t want the community to agree on a single design for you to go ahead with right? Rather you want a good array of ideas and feedback. Any community can give you back.
It’s also hard to imagine Apple zealots not wanting to be involved in the process or offering up new ideas.
October 26th, 2009 at 11:43 am
@Ted – thanks for the comment – that is an interesting angle indeed.
@Richard – Maybe so, but if the only thing I can assemble is a community with defenders of the truth, meaning no diversity, I could not use that community to help me design new products – it’d be a sure way to extinction because of the group think mentality, and it also would exclude me from designing products for the 70% of prospects who are not my customers yet.
And sure, in some cases the community will help me design a product (i.e., Threadless, Kettles Chips, SAP, etc.), sometimes they will just give me ideas (Starbucks, Adobe, Dell) and sometimes they will just give me feedback.
October 30th, 2009 at 2:44 am
I think everybody or every community (believers ) who understand the sentiments of other communities or people .They should respect each others beliefs .
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:28 am
New blog post: Defenders of Belief vs. Seekers of the Truth – A classification of communities based on members http://bit.ly/2L5v3D
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Defenders of Belief vs. Seekers of the Truth – A classification of communities based on members: A lot of.. http://bit.ly/gRSSP
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
October 27th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
RT @tweetmeme Defenders of Belief vs. Seekers of the Truth – A classification of communities based on members http://bit.ly/2L5v3D
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 6th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Defenders of Belief vs. Seekers of the Truth – A classification of online communities based on members. http://bit.ly/2uVGWe
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 7th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Defenders of Belief vs. Seekers of the Truth – A classification of communities based on members http://j.mp/3MYv8C
This comment was originally posted on Twitter