There are 10 really critical foundations to make a Virtual Enterprise Network a success: 1) Communities and Project Dynamic, 2) Network Ground Rules, 3) Group Membership Structures, 4) Practical Group Structures, 5) Complete set of Network Roles, 6) Appropriate Legal Frameworks, 7) Practical Exchange Model, 8) Viable Stakeholder Ecosystem, 9) Realistic Network Development Model, 10) Proven Development Road Map. This article offers an introduction to these ten foundations.

A unique reference card for printing on 2-sided A4 (Landscape) which folds into 6 sections showing the key priorities and resources in developing The Networked Enterprise through its 7 maturity stages with the 8 key techniques and their checklists. A must-have for all group collaboration coaches, leaders and practitioners!

As a festive treat I am making available, totally free to Bioteams readers, my Virtual Teams and Communities Training Manual (155 pages) which I have used on a number of occasions as a comprehensive full-day workshop on this very important topic.

Ben Worthen, writing for the Wall Street Journal (July 16, 2008), reports on a Deloitte survey of over 100 businesses who set up online communities. They found that most of them (>75%) failed and were more like ghost towns than thriving communities. There were 3 main reasons they failed....

Howard Rheingold talks on www.TED.com about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group.

What do Ants, Termites, Graffiti Artists, Cavemen, Teenagers and Town Planners all have in common? They understand the power of Stigmergy to leave marks in their environment as important sign-posts to friends (or foes). Even more importantly they all know the difference between sign-posting and dialogue.

Many networks and communities seem to require constant attention from the leaders or facilitators. Its always the same old people who seem to do all the work. Take away the leader, perhaps because the funding runs out, and the community just withers and dies - sometimes within a matter of weeks. Often this happens because the network has not cultivated the 3 critical dialogues in a community: taking care of business, grooming and emoting. These dialogs must take occur across the 3 key network encounters: one-one, one-many and many-many. Heres how you can make your networks and communities less fragile!

Anyone serious about developing community, virtual or otherwise, should have a look at the excellent free resources at the Foundation for Community Encouragement originally established by Dr Scott Peck to help groups of all types work through the universal stages of community building.

Growing a successful virtual community is like tending a delicate rose in your garden. Both the rose and the community need to be carefully nurtured and both are under constant threats to their continued health and existence. Despite all our hopes and intentions for them, they are both living systems and will never thrive and develop on demand – no matter how hard we push!

People are always asking me about good, proven techniques for developing and supporting teams, networks and communities so heres an introduction to my favourite fifteen techniques for teams.

Major Oil Company, Schlumberger, exploits self-organizing virtual communities.