By Georgina Allen
Global Development Intern

The more deeply I become involved in the global development community, the more I can’t help but think of The Four Stages of Learning.  In psychology, this theory describes the stages through which one passes when learning a new skill.  It goes something like this:

Unconscious incompetence > conscious incompetence > conscious competence > unconscious competence

I have been feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of progressing past the stage of “conscious incompetence” when it comes to learning everything there is to know about global development.  What do I mean by this?  Technology has made information on this topic readily available, inspiring a whole wave of new activists in this community who inevitably become eager to share their own perspective.  Reviewing all of this material online is an impossible task, so finding a strategy to sift through it all is a crucial element of effectively combating global development issues.

In a June 2009 speech in Cairo, Obama stated “There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground.”  While this statement was made in the context of a discussion on U.S.-Arab relations, it seems to have resonated with the global development community.  Last week, USAID launched Global Pulse 2010, a 3-day online discussion marathon for people working in the field of development in an effort to aggregate great ideas from around the world.

Upon its conclusion, the staff of Global Pulse selected “hot ideas.”  Many of these emphasized the importance of building community and communication.  My favorite suggestion was in the “Inspiring a New Generation” forum, where one person advocated for the use of video conference capabilities in classrooms around the world.  Some responded with information on organizations who are already working to make this a reality, such as One Laptop per Child and Global Nomads Group.

In this discussion, other websites working to break down communication barriers and build community were also mentioned.  Panwapa.org offers a space where young children can connect with other children from around the globe based on their interests, for example, soccer.  Children can select from a list of pre-translated messages to send to other members.  On news.meedan.net, links to news articles in English and Arabic can be posted and instantly translated, making alternative perspectives on current events available to those without the necessary language skills.

The World Bank is another organization who has recently taken on the task of strengthening the global development community with their new Urgent Evoke website, which is promoted as “A crash course in saving the world.”  Each week, a “mission” is released to all members.  For example, this week’s mission, which is related to “empowering women,” gives members points for a blog entries summarizing related news stories, personal efforts to empower women and their vision for the future of women’s’ empowerment.  All of this user-generated content is shared on the site, and active members are given priority in contests for mentorships, scholarships and even investment money.

While some of these innovative organizations and websites use community and communication to inspire a sense of responsibility, by aggregating and streamlining information they are also facilitating my quest to learn about effective solutions to global development issues and overcome my “conscious incompetence”.

Photo by Avant Game on Flickr.

Last night I had the privilege of joining some Re-Vision Labs colleagues and two accomplished Seattle social entrepreneurs in a conversation about global development and sustainable business models.  Samantha Rayner and Cole Hoover are part of the International Management Team of Lumana, a microfinance startup serving clients in Ghana.  In less than two years, the Lumana team has implemented a comprehensive entrepreneurship program in two communities in Ghana with ambitious plans to increase their client base and enhance client services in the coming months.

As an undergraduate business student at the University of Washington, Rayner was inspired by the teachings of Muhammad Yunus, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his pioneering work in microfinance.  She began researching global microfinance markets and learned that only 1% of funds invested in microfinance worldwide were going to Africa.  In 2008 Rayner’s research took her to the village of Atorkor in Ghana, where she partnered with Chief Samuel Adjorlolo to provide the business training and small loans to several village entrepreneurs
(read news article about Chief Adjorlolo and Atorkor here).

During her first trip to Ghana, Rayner worked with six cooperatives, each with five to eight members, to develop a pragmatic business training curriculum and lending process.  Rayner dedicated much of her time to job-shadowing cooperative members in order to gain insight into Atorkor’s economy.   In the seashore village with a population of about 2,000, many people already operated three or four small businesses, such as selling porridge, weaving printed cloth, or fish-mongering.

Upon her return to Seattle, Rayner started talking to fellow Foster Business School students about creating a sustainable business model that could be replicated in other villages.  Rayner currently works with a team of 15 volunteer in Seattle, many of whom were recruited from her network of classmates and community collaborators.  Hoover joined Lumana’s International Management Team as the Outreach Coordinator, and Re-Vision Labs founding partner Brett Horvath currently serves on the Board of Directors.  Hoover pointed out that helping to build Lumana has allowed him the opportunity “to take all these things that you’ve learned from the amazing Seattle business mentorship community and start trying them out, which is really, really cool.”

Since Lumana serves a relatively isolated rural population, the client service model differs from other microfinance institutions located in urban areas.  Hoover explained that the Lumana team realized early on that a focus on agriculture was essential for providing clients with food security.  Rayner is proud that Lumana has “made [microfinance] work in a community that has traditionally been very difficult to reach.”

Lumana currently has two loan officers and eight entrepeneurship educators working in Ghana.  Clients are required to take business training before

qualifying for a loan, which has proven to be an important part of Lumana’s success.  Hoover emphasized that “education always helps, especially if you’re doing in a targeted way that benefits [the clients].”

Other global development organizations and several media outlets have taken note of Lumana’s rapid success.  Rayner and Hoover traveled to New York in January for the 2nd Microfinance and Sustainable Development Summit, where Rayner was honored to speak on a “Models that Work” panel alongside other social entrepreneurs.  Last month, Lumana was the featured organization at Microfinance and Microbrews, a recurring event sponsored by SeaMo, the preeminent Seattle microfinance network.  Lumana has also been highlighted in The Seattle Times, The Daily at the University of Washington, and the Foster Business School Journal, in addition to many other news sources.

Plans for growth at Lumana include launching a fellowship program, expanding service to six or seven nearby villages, and building partnerships in order to offer more comprehensive client services.  Eventually, the leadership team would like Lumana to become an information hub for the villages it serves in order to help clients access healthcare, further agricultural training, and entrepreneurial mentorship opportunities.

I look forward to watching Lumana’s progress and providing future updates.

Prosuming

Opening up to open sourcing as a profitable business model is one of the newest trends among businesses. Many different companies are embracing the idea that their consumers and the public at large could produce valuable contributions to product design. Starbucks, for example, allows consumers to design their own coffee drink. Puma’s Mongolian Shoe BBQ lets the public design their own shoe. Amazon.com, IBM, craigslist, and a host of other businesses are all looking to open source as a new way to market, to design products, and to compete in what is becoming a ‘prosumer’ world.

Here are some more examples of companies integrating Open Source procedures into their business philosophy:

Fashion – Threadless

Why hire a product design team to come up with catchy phrases and designs for t-shirts when you can have the public do it for free?

Threadless is a Chicago-based T-shirt company which serves as the perfect example of a business capitalizing on prosumers. All of the tees produced by Threadless are designed and voted on by the public. Up to 300 designs are submitted daily, the favorites are picked by the public, and then the winners are awarded $2,000 per creation.

According to an article in Forbes Magazine, this translates into a T-shirt company with no product design team who made $30 million in revenue in 2009, secured 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and 100,000 fans on Facebook. Not bad for a company of only 50 actual employees.

Threadless has expertly cultivated a community of loyal fans and contributors that has proved to be the key to its success.

As Cam Balzer, the vice president of marketing at Threadless says:

“We’ve got a close-knit group of loyal customers and have worked hard to build that. The people who submit ideas to us, vote and buy our products aren’t random people, and they aren’t producing random work. We work closely with our consumers and give them a place on our site, the Threadless forum, where they can exchange ideas with one another–ideas that go beyond designing T-shirts. We have consumers who have voted on 150,000 designs, which means they’ve spent hours interacting on our site … They’re part of the community we’ve cultivated.”

- Forbes Magazine

The Web – Mozilla Firefox

The widespread use of the internet plays an integral in bringing open sourcing to the forefront of business practice. Without it, companies wouldn’t have nearly as much access to the opinions and contributions of prosumers. It therefore makes sense that web browsers like Mozilla Firefox (along with many other web-based software and applications) would be open source.

Introduced in 1998, Mozilla Firefox was designed around the idea that the internet “should be public, open, and accessible.” To that end, Mozilla brings together thousands of volunteers to aid its small staff in creating products which are available for free to the public. The company’s operations are open and transparent, the entire code for the browser is therefore a public resource, and the company hierarchy not defined by seniority or necessarily ownership, but by who contributes the most to product design and ultimately to “making the internet better for everyone.”

Media – NowPublic

NowPublic is a Vancvouer-based, online news source based entirely on stories and news submitted by the public. All of the audio, video, images, and written stories come from the public. The public even chose the lead story by voting on their favorite. The entire content of NowPublic is produced by 200,000 citizen journalists living in 5,500 different cities in 160 different countries. This makes NowPublic the largest participatory news organization in the world.

Still a relatively new company, NowPublic is rapidly making its mark in the media as reliable and remarkably current. Because NowPublic’s journalists are regular people with access to technology – whether it’s a computer, cell phone, camera, or anything else – NowPublic often finds itself the first news source to run a story. Other news sources have to bring in the reporters, ship them over to the drama lugging camera equipment in a manner which isn’t entirely expedious. For NowPublic, all it takes is one person with a Camcorder and an internet connection.

In 2007, NowPublic was named by Time Magazine as one of the top 50 websites for the year.

The Gold Industry – Goldcorp

Open Source methods have even found their way to gold!

When Goldcorp CEO Rob McEwen found himself heading up a dying mining company out of a 50 year old mine in Red Lake, Ontario, he knew he had do something different and radical to keep Goldcorp from folding.

Taking a page out of Linus Torvalds book, he decided to open up to the public and allow them to tell him where to dig for gold. McEwen published all of Goldcorp’s geological data on the web – an unprecedented move in the gold industry – and waited for mass collaboration to work its magic…. and it didn’t disappoint.

1,000 people from 50 countries competed for a grand price of $575,000 in what McEwen called the Goldcorp challenge. The virtual prospecting resulting in 110 targets being pinpointed by the public. 80% of those targets were profitable and resulted in $3 billion dollars worth of gold.

Goldcorp was transformed from the underperforming, dying company it used to be into a $9 billion company. Open sourcing proved to be the company’s savior.

A New and Open Breed of Enterprise

I’ll sign out with a quote from Wikinomics authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams from a Wikinomics series they wrote for Business Week in 2007:

“A new breed of 21st-century enterprise is emerging—one that opens its doors to the world; co-innovates with everyone, especially customers; shares resources that were previously closely guarded; harnesses the power of mass collaboration; and behaves not as a multi-national, but as something new: a truly global business. These new modus operandi revolve around four powerful new ideas: openness, ‘peering,’ sharing, and acting globally.”

Community, Consumer Loyalty, and Word-of-Mouth Marketing

When a company creates community around its products, it ensures customer loyalty. When engaged in a community, consumers no longer feel like they’re consumers. Rather, they see themselves as guests, members, and participants congregating around a common goal or belief. That change in mindset plays an integral role in up-keeping consumer commitment and in encouraging word-of-mouth marketing.

But why stop there? If community cultivating can serve as a marketing strategy and as the best possible customer care model available, shouldn’t it be able to do more?

Well, it can. A business’s community of fans, clients, followers, subscribers, guests…whatever you want to call them… can also take care of product design.

Peering and Linux

The idea of outsourcing product design to the public has become much more popular with the invention of the internet. It is the internet that has allowed businesses to source the intellect of people all over the world. What we’re seeing, as the Wikinomics authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams describe it, is a “new form of horizontal organization [that] is emerging [to rival] the hierarchical firm in its capacity to create information-based products and services, and in some cases, physical things” (22).

Tapscott and Williams call this new form of organization ‘peering,’ but the act of increasing corporate transparency and bringing in the public to help design and create a product is also becoming known under different vocabulary such as ‘open sourcing,’ ‘crowd sourcing,’ ‘peer-to-peer production,’ and ‘community-based design.’

One of the most familiar cases of outsourcing product design to the public is the example of the Linux computer operating system. Linux was started by a man named Linus Torvalds in 1991. Torvalds took the existing Unix operating system, created a simpler version of it, and then posted that version online for other programmers to view and modify. Some of the programmers made changes, for free, Torvalds ended up licensing the program under a general public license, and Linux as an open source operating system was born (Tapscott and Williams, 24).

Today, thousands of volunteer programmers make modifications to Linux on a daily basis, and because it’s reliable and more importantly, free, Linux is considered an important “enterprise software keystone” for many companies (Tapscott and Williams, 24).

Linux represents the perfect example of an organization or a business sourcing the public to help design a product. With the internet, especially the onset of Web 2.0, with our still sour economy, more and more companies are adopting the open source model. It’s cheaper than supporting a bulky design team; it can be quicker than using traditional design methods; and perhaps most importantly, the transparency and trust inherent in peering and open source strategies are incredibly effective at cultivating that longed-for sense of community and customer loyalty around a product.

Of course, with that sense of community and loyalty centering around a product, businesses are rewarded with increased word-of-mouth marketing and increased participation in product design. It’s a virtuous circle. Open up to the public, allow them an opinion on the product design, secure their loyalties and their powers of advocacy, garner more interest in the product, and ultimately receive more input in product design!

I want to go into more detail on different businesses and companies that operate on the open source model, but I think a separate blog post should be dedicated to exploring those distinct examples. Look for it next week!

Collaboration = Wealth

For now, I would like to close out with a Ted Talk by Howard Rheingold on the history of human collaboration, current economic thought on human collaboration, and the future of human collaboration. In particular, I want to draw attention to the last six minutes of Rheingold’s talk where Rheingold starts to talk about how open sourcing, peer-production, and cooperation, can transform into wealth.

*Tapscott, Don and Anthony D. Willilams. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. USA: Portfolio, 2008.

A New Kind of Worker

Last spring, I came across a series of articles in Time Magazine called ‘The Future of Work.” The series stated that the coming decade will bring an end to the ‘climbing the corporate ladder’ trend that we’re all so familiar with.

The upcoming generation of workers, according to a consulting firm quoted in the Times series, will no longer be defining success by paycheck, rank, or seniority. Instead, people will begin to define success “‘by what matters to [them] on a personal level,’ whether that’s the chance to lead a new-product launch or being able to take winters off for snowboarding”(Fischer, “When Gen X Runs the Show”).

The series goes on to point out that workers are no longer as willing to commit themselves, body and soul, to their jobs and only their jobs. Balance in life is becoming a new and important priority.

A New Kind of Company?

My question is this: If money is no longer the primary determinant of success for individuals, how will this new trend affect the way our corporations and businesses measure success?

If this new generation of workers are defining success by how well they maintain a work/life balance and how often they’re able to achieve their personal goals, does that then mean that our companies will cease to operate only for money? Could there ever exist a future where entire businesses measure their success not by sales or clients but by their ability to attain certain goals while maintaining balance?

Being a bit of a realist and subscriber to free market philosophies, I’m not entirely convinced this could, indeed, be a feasible future.

However, it is interesting to note that there are already some companies who are seeking to define their success on these new, more balanced terms. The long-standing outdoor clothing company, Patagonia, Inc. is one of them.

Founded by climber and surfer, Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia has always been a little bit of an anomaly among businesses for a couple of reasons:

1. The goals of the management team and employees are closely related to the goals of the clients. Those goals are, predictably, enjoy the out-of-doors in comfortable out-of-door-wear. That’s how the company got started in the first place: Yvon Chouinard started making his own equipment for personal use.
2. The company’s long term success depends on the preservation of wild spaces.

So here we have a company run by people with personal goals of enjoying wild spaces with both a personal and corporate interest in the preservation of those wild spaces.

The end result? A company who, like the future generation of workers, measures it’s success in a new way.

As Yvon Chouinard writes in his book Let My People Go Surfing, Patagonia evaluates its success not on sales numbers but on the “number of [environmental] threats averted: old-growth forests that were not clear-cut, mines that were never dug in pristine areas, toxic pesticides that were not sprayed,” or conversely, on the positive results of dismantled dams, restored wild areas, and creation of parks and wildernesses (Chouinard, 78).

By those measures, Patagonia has been extremely successful. As of 2006, Patagonia’s 1% for the Planet program in which 1% of the company’s sales are donated to grassroots, environmental groups has caught on with over 400 other companies (Chouinard, XI). Since 1985, over $22 million has gone to environmental groups from Patagonia alone (Chouinard, 78).

A Hopeful Outlook

Every company has a mission statement. Patagonia’s is: “make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis” (Chouinard, 78). The company focuses not just on a profit or even solely on producing a product. It also brings into consideration somewhat loftier goals like avoiding inflicting unnecessary harm and seeking to sustain the environment.

Perhaps the corporations of the future will have mission statements of a similar nature that look at success from a broader, more open perspective and that make more of an effort to incorporate all three of the elements of the Triple Bottom Line (people, planet, profit) than they do today. Profit will always be an integral part of business, but perhaps, someday, people will view profit as something that ca be achieved not through the ‘rape and pillage of the earth’ but rather by doing the right thing (Chouinard).

Perhaps someday, corporate success will be defined not just by numbers in a bank but also by what good that company has done for humanity at large. Perhaps someday, the new business philosophy will be: Why stop with profit alone when your business can change the world?

I’ll close out with another quote from Let My People Go Surfing that really highlights the potential role that business can play in making our world a better place:

“A certain void exists now with the decline of so many good institutions that used to guide our lives, such as social clubs, religions, athletic teams, neighborhoods, and nuclear families, all of which had a unifying effect. They gave us a sense of belonging to a group, working toward a common goal. People still need an ethical center, a sense of their role in society. A company can help fill that void if it shows its employees and its customers that it understands its own ethical responsibilities and then can help them respond to their own.

Patagonia will never be completely socially responsible. it will never make a totally sustainable non-damaging product. But it is committed to trying” (Chouinard, 259).

*Chouinard, Yvon. Let My People Go Surfing. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.

Wow. I thought I was being original when I first came up with this topic for a blog post. Turns out there’s a lot of debate floating around on the world wide web about whether or not Vancouver’s famed yoga-inspired athletic apparel company, Lululemon, is a corporate cult. Check out these two interesting articles on Lululemon’s cultish traits: “Lululemon’s Cult of Selling” by Fast Company and Lust for Lulu by New York Magazine.

Lululemon fans as pictured in New York Magazine's article "Lust for Lulu"

Defining our Terminology

Let’s start with a look at definitions.

Cult (as per Google)

• followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices
• fad: an interest followed with exaggerated zeal
• followers of an unorthodox, extremist, or false religion or sect who often live outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader
• a religion or sect that is generally considered to be unorthodox, extremist, or false

Community (also per Google)

• a group of people living in a particular local area
• common ownership
• a group of nations having common interests
• agreement as to goals
• residential district: a district where people live; occupied primarily by private residences
• (ecology) a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other

Based on these two definitions, it would appear the main difference between ‘community’ and ‘cult’ is the intensity of fervour possessed by the members and whether or not these members consider themselves as existing fully outside of society as we know it.

‘Community’ is made up of people with similar interests; ‘Cults’ are made up of people with similar beliefs, or zealously-held convictions rather.

Lululemon Cult?

As I said before, whether or not Lululemon Athletica is cult-like is a controversial issue.

Lululemon certainly seems to employ features of a cult. The company was founded in 1998 by Chip Wilson, newly ‘awakened’ yoga practitioner and avid subscriber to self-help books like The Secret and institutionalized inspiration such as that provisioned by the Landmark Forum.

Employees at Lululemon are required to subscribe to Wilson’s recipe-for-success-literature-and-educational-institutions. I’ve heard rumors to this end which almost makes working for Lululemon seem like something of a creepy employment option. Employees are required to listen to self-actualization tapes, told to post posters outlining their personal, health, and professional goals for all to see (and assist where needed), asked to indulge in literature like The Secret and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and after one year of employment, sent off to participate in a three-day Landmark forum.

According to the aforementioned New York Magazine article on Lululemon’s cult-like operations, the Landmark Forum has been accused of being a cult for quite some time…since the 70s actually. It’s a program “specifically designed to bring about positive and permanent shifts in the quality of your life – in just three days.” Hmmm, could that be three days of brainwashing? Most attendees become what you could call full converts who believe quite passionately and fervently in the gospel of the forum. In other words, they become members of the Landmark cult. Chip Wilson could be one such member, and his corporation’s push to bring employees into the family of the Landmark forum could be interpreted as corporate cult cultivating.

The Lululemon Community

In light of the above, while I suppose what Lululemon does is a bit cult-like, the company also fully cultivates community. I suppose this is logical considering cult is really an intensification of community.

"Friends are more important than money?" Perhaps it should say, "More friends equals more money."

One of Lulu’s foundational philosophies is that “a company can only be truly great when it has a close relationship to the community it serves” (see Lululemon website). In order to get closer to its spandex-wearing, flexible “yogini” community, Lululemon has sacked the traditional retail ‘salesperson’ and replaced them with Lululemon-termed ‘Educators’ who exist to communicate the company’s core values and product information to customers….errr….’Guests’ I mean.

Both Guests and Educators both have access to free yoga classes, usually on store premises. They’re also encouraged to share their goals with the ‘community’ and work towards personal growth through what resources Lululemon graciously provides including its online forums and social media. In this manner, Lululemon is not only representing itself as a clothing company to consumers but rather as a means for personal development.

Lulu has also sacked the traditional methods of advertising in favour of 100% word-of-mouth marketing. Instead of TV commercials and ads, the company as recruited ‘Ambassadors,’ or athletically fit and inspiring individuals (usually yoga instructors though also triathletes and runners) who spread the good Lululemon word to newcomers.

With a simple change of terminology, some free sessions of downward dog and toe-touching, and innovative marketing ,Lululemon has managed to change itself from a retailer into a community hub. And not just that, but it’s managed to “grow from a single storefront on the surfside of Vancouver, British Columbia, to a public company with more than 100 outlets and $340 million in annual revenue” (Fastcompany.com). Lululemon makes $1,200 more per square foot than J.Crew and Abercrombie & Fitch using “virtually zero advertising” (Fast Company).

Cult Brands

Cult? Community? Who cares? Whatever Lululemon is doing, it seems to be working for the company in terms of sales.

Douglas Atkin, author of The Culting of Brands, would argue that Lululemon is successfully forming its brand into a cult. Atkin would add that, if you’re wanting to sell a product, ‘cult’ is not a bad thing.

According to Atkin, our society has progressed to such a state of consumerism that branding is no longer used, as it was traditionally, to validate the quality and authenticity of a product. Instead, brands are used to differential products. As Atkin says, “Nowadays, producers of brands realize that the consumer needs to say: ‘No, this is my product, I identify with it. The Apple computer is my computer because it stands for creativity and nonconformism, just like I do’” (“Interview with Douglas Atkin.” PBS) . Basically, there’s too much stuff out there, and a lot of that stuff really isn’t that much different from other stuff except that it might be branded differently. When a brand can get a consumer to identify with it, to see it as a representation of who they are, that’s when the brand starts selling the stuff.

The best way to get a consumer to identify and claim a brand as their own is via word of mouth. People trust their acquaintances far more than they trust advertisements or commercials. According to Atkin, advertising as it was done traditionally is on its way out entirely as more and more companies embrace word-of-mouth marketing strategies. Creating a Cult Brand is the best way to fully take advantage of word-of-mouth-marketing.

I should point out that cults aren’t necessarily bad. They have a negative connotation to them, but that’s probably more likely due to the fact that you tend to hear about satanic cults or suicidal cults more than you hear about the harmless cults. Atkin says, “We need cults, and the people who join them are very, very normal [...] And the reasons they join cults — and cult brands, as I learned from my research — are universal reasons to do with the human condition. They join because they want to belong to something, and they want to make meaning. They want to have a reason for being. Those are two very, very simple reasons that all of us in the human race need to express” (Interview with Douglas Atkin.” PBS).

The empty clothes racks and increased profits indicate that Lululemon is meeting with success in its efforts to create meaning and sense of belonging for its ‘Guests.’ Yes, the company does step over the line between community and cult in the way it tries to imbue its employees with Landmark Forum and self-help-book scripture, but the way it engages its community is highly effective in upping sales and bringing in the cash. Zero advertising, ambassadors armed with the word-of-mouth, and an interest (even if it is just a perceived interest) in connecting its clients to a healthier lifestyle through free yoga classes and other such resources are all brilliant innovations for a business model of a new century.

To quote Atkin again, consumer loyalty “…comes from a sense of community, a sense of belonging, and a sense of buying into something – a worldview in which [the consumer] believes. ”More than community, more than cult, Lululemon is cultivating consumer loyalty, and it’s that loyalty that is proving to be the key to the company’s success.

In my next several posts, I plan to carry out case studies of how community works in business. Why would a business choose to incorporate community? How does business profit from cultivating community? How does a corporation create community around its product in the first place?

I’ll start with Starbucks, the perfect example of the impersonal, giant, corporate chain threatening to take over the world with its ubiquitous Grande lattes and frappuccinos who suddenly seeks out community…

Last summer there was quite the buz (almost the hyper, jittery buz of some espresso-holic Seattle-ite) about the coffee titan. Starbucks was breaking with tradition and going “undercover,” as an article in the Huffington Post describes the unusual move. For some reason, Starbucks had chosen to open up a new coffee shop that would look nothing like the previously employed, cookie-cutter-recipe cafe that the corporation had already opened up across the world.

Why the change? Why suddenly was the old policy of brand consistency and familiarity overturned for a coffee shop that would effectively look nothing like what we’ve come to know, love, and yes, sometimes hate, about Starbucks?

The answer: Starbucks is looking to incorporate more community into its business model

This new, community based Starbucks store is called 15th Avenue Coffee. It has none of the familiar trappings of your original Starbucks. It serves beer. It wants to have poetry slams. Above all, it’s looking to set itself apart from the Starbucks chain that gave birth to it and actively engage the local community.

To be fair, Starbucks has always sought out at least some elements of community cultivation and corporate social responsibility before going undercover. Its efforts to purchase fair trade coffee, the way it sends nutrient-hungry gardeners (like me) home to garden with leftover coffee grounds, and the company’s employee support system are all efforts by Starbucks to create a positive community around its product.

But unexpectedly individualizing its stores? This is taking marketing to a whole new level. I mean, this was a former multinational tycoon, just another of the faceless chains where you’re guaranteed to get the exact same product at every store. Lack of variety, lack of individuality. This was the model that served Starbucks for years to grow and grow. It brought the business of specialty coffee to center stage. In some cities, it seems there’s a Starbucks on every corner. Expand, expand, expand, but then, bam, Starbucks is getting local!?

But going undercover isn’t the only way Starbucks is cultivating community these days. A quick perusal of their website will show you immediately that community is an integral part of their marketing. To be honest, having never looked at their website before, I have no idea whether or not community has always been so central to their online branding. My ignorance of Starbucks’ marketing history aside, it’s still interesting to note the kind of emphasis they place on community on their webpage.

The Starbucks homepage has a lot of frothy looking cups of coffee on it, personal account information, and a short video about a rewards program. However, there is also links dedicated entirely to cultivating a Starbucks community. They have the usual Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube links. More importantly for our story here is that the MyStarbucksIdea.com, Starbucks V2V, and Starbucks Shared Planet programs. It is through these programs that you really see Starbucks’ efforts to cultivate community coming through.

In the MyStarbucksIdea.com, people obviously have the chance to share suggestions with Starbucks. They create an account, sign in, and join the conversation.

In Starbucks V2V, Stabucks is “redefining community.” It has essentially created an online forum to connect people with other people, actions, and causes to bring good into the world.

Finally, in the Starbucks Shared Planet Program, you’ll find Ethical Sourcing, Environmental Stewardship, and Community Involvement programs. In the Community Involvement tab, Starbucks says:

“From the neighborhoods where our stores are located, to the ones where our coffee is grown – we believe in being involved in the communities we’re a part of. Bringing people together, inspiring change and making a difference in people’s lives – it’s all part of being a good neighbor. And it’s a commitment rooted in the belief that we can use our scale to be a catalyst for change.”

Frankly, I’m impressed. I had no idea Starbucks was trying to be such a catalyst for change, trying to cultivate and engage its community offline and online.

Maybe this new move is towards community cultivation is appropriate. After all, that’s what Starbucks was about originally: a local coffee house that garnered a loyal following and community. Perhaps the ‘powers that be’ at Starbucks understand that the local and individualized is more attractive to a community of people than a chain corporation practically synonomous with McDonalds and other fast food joints. Starbucks does try to give off the sense that it’s all about the finer points in life. Community is one of those finer points.

Ultimately, Starbucks creating community around its specialty coffees and shops through the individualization of its cafes, through its efforts in community involvement, and through its social media programs means that Starbucks is getting to know its customers in a far more intimate manner than ever before. And if Starbucks knows its customers better, it can serve them better, and in the end, better secure their loyalties, all while making the world a better place. What a novel concept!

Up next week: Lululemon: Cultivating Community or Cultivating Cult?