ABSTRACT
The concept of a community is an important idea, one that has been around for thousands of years. But community can mean many things. Dictionaries yield a wide range of definitions for the word community. For most of us, it’s the people in our local area. That can be a street, a neighbourhood, an estate, a parish, even a country. But that’s only one possible definition. A community can equally apply to people sharing a religion, from a church, temple or mosque. It could be a group of people with similar circumstances or shared interests. Single mothers, American expats living in Britain and those with a passion for old classic cars all form communities when they come together. The point is that before a company can properly engage with this external innovator community, it needs to understand and appreciate exactly what makes up this community. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a guide to this external innovator community and also to investigate some concepts associated with this particular community.
