The company builds and funds a community of the people who use the product in their jobs (conferences, user groups, public galleries, forums, certification, awards), so members teach one another, show their work, raise their standing, and carry the product to new employers and teams.
How Practitioner Community works
Members' careers become tied to the product, so they recruit colleagues, bring it to their next employer and supply free training and content. The same pool of practitioners makes the product easier for employers to staff, which can become an expertise network effect.
How companies won with Practitioner Community
From the win chains in Strategy Canon case studies: what the winner did, and what its rival did at the same step.
vs. Qlik · 2008–18
Tableau
Free public canvas and conferences train a practitioner community
What it did
Customer conference grew from 180 (2008) to 2,000+ (2012) and 17,000+ (2018)
Qlik
First global user conference and a free desktop (Qlik Sense) arrived in 2014, four years after Tableau Public
What community of practitioners did the company build, how large did it get, and how did members bring in new customers?
Who names it
Author
What they call it / where it appears
Spinks +
Community as a competitive advantage
Note. A general brand community of consumers or fans is not this tag. Content the company publishes to attract buyers is Owned Media; putting the product into schools is Educational Seeding; referrals from satisfied customers are Customer Referrals. When the practitioner pool itself makes the product more valuable to employers, tag Expertise network effects separately.