People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brand, and Teams

Harness the power of communities, both inside and outside of your organization, to drive value and revenue, activate your employees’ and customers’ talents, and create a highly engaged, loyal customer base.

What if you discovered a blueprint that could grow your brand’s reputation and loyalty, dramatically reduce customer service issues, produce content and technology, and cement a powerful, lasting relationship between you and your customers?

Communities have been a popular topic since the rise of the Internet and social media, but few companies have consistently harnessed their power, driven tangible value, and effectively measured their return on investment (ROI) like:

• Salesforce.com has seen tremendous results with their community network of over 2 million members advocating for, supporting, and integrating Salesforce.com products
• Star Citizen used Kickstarter to raise over $150 million to build their new video game and a community of over 2 million players.
• Red Hat collaborated with their community to build industry-leading technology, which led to a $34 billion acquisition by IBM

Companies such as PayPal, Facebook, Bosch, Microsoft, CapitalOne, and Google, have also built communities inside their organizations, which have fostered innovation, broken down silos, and helped their organizations to operate more efficiently and collaboratively.

People Powered helps C-suite leaders, founders, marketers, customer advocates, and community leaders gain a competitive advantage by answering the following questions:

• What is the key value proposition of building a community?
• What kind of community do we need and how do we build and integrate it into our organization?
• How do we incentivize and encourage people to get involved, build reliable growth, and keep community members engaged?
• How do we develop authentic, productive relationships with community members both online and in person?
• How do we get departmental buy-in, hire effectively, and create consistent, reliable community engagement skills in our organization?
• What are the strategic and tactical pitfalls and roadblocks we need to avoid?
• How do we make sure that our community continues to grow with us—and more importantly, how do we make sure that we continue to grow with them?

People Powered pulls together over 20 years of pragmatic experience into a clear, simple methodology and blueprint to not just answer these questions, but deliver results. It also includes contributions from industry leaders including Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Emmy-award winning actor), Peter H. Diamandis (Founder of XPRIZE, Singularity University), Jim Zemlin (Executive Director, The Linux Foundation), Mike Shinoda (Co-Founder, Linkin Park), Jim Whitehurst (CEO, Red Hat), and more.

Don’t get left behind—become an industry trailblazer and ensure your company’s longevity by tapping into the most dynamic force both outside and inside your organization: the people.

A small selection of endorsements for People Powered:

"Jono is an expert at integrating the potential of communities with businesses. People Powered provides a clear and thoughtful blueprint for others looking to tap into this potential and unlock benefits for their own organizations." -- Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO, Red Hat and author of "The Open Organization"

“If you want to unlock the power of collaboration in communities, companies, and teams, Jono Bacon should be your tour guide, and People Powered should be your map.” -- Jamie Smith, former deputy press secretary to President Barack Obama.

“If you want to tap into the power that communities can bring to businesses and teams, there is no greater expert than Jono Bacon.” -- Nat Friedman, CEO, GitHub

"People Powered equips businesses with a powerful community building formula. It is clear, consistent and thus a genuinely effective tool for integrating community into the day to day operations of a business. Highly recommended." -- Paul Salnikow, CEO, The Executive Centre

"If you don’t like herding cats but need to build a community, you need to read People Powered" - Jamie Hyneman, Co-Host and Co-Creator of Mythbusters

“Whether you are a start-up or a corporation, if you are not building a community, you are missing an enormous opportunity. People Powered needs to be on every executive’s bookshelf.” -- Maxx Bricklin, Co-Founder, BOLD Capital Partners