How do we measure success in the interaction field?

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Building an interaction field company requires both a kind of enlightenment and a certain amount of risk. You may have to rethink your product or service—how it lives in the world, why it exists, and who it exists for—or you may have to restructure your management.?

Perhaps this all sounds well and good to you. You may have an idea of interaction fields your company can be involved in and how to go about getting there, but the next question is:

How do I know if I am succeeding?

The question of measurement is an important one, but unfortunately the answer is tricky. The vital metrics for one interaction field may be quite different from those of another. The oldest interaction in the history of business — sales — is no longer a sufficient or foundational measure of success. It is, in many respects, the feeblest of all interactions. It is necessary, of course, but it does not guarantee customer retention, innovation, or velocity.

How is success measured in an interaction field company?

• Frequency of a participant taking the single action that most adds value to the interaction field
• The speed and scope of propagation (or velocity)
• The number, type, and potential of collaboration opportunities?
• Movement into new areas of the field

Companies with interaction fields can scale exponentially, at a significantly faster rate than value-chain companies. The interaction field company, then, seeks to achieve velocity to the point that it dominates or even defines a field.?

At that point, the traditional ideas of competitive advantage become meaningless.?

Success for the interaction field company is all about creating new, meaningful, shared, and exponential value, evolving new organizational forms, opening new ways forward, and continuously exceeding customer expectations.?

The interaction field company achieves velocity when its participants embrace the field, which powers a virtuous cycle. The cycle creates momentum and exponential growth through network, learning, and viral effects.?

Because performance is understood and defined differently in an interaction field, companies will have to rethink, rework, and, in some cases, abandon the traditional metrics that once indicated success and growth.?

While some of the integral aspects of a growing and thriving interaction field can be measured (such as the number of members within the nucleus and ecosystem or the average number of interactions between them per day), others are more difficult to calculate, such as the value, meaning, or degree of reciprocity of those interactions.?

I never said building an interaction field would be easy, only that it could be done. For the interaction field company, a long period might be spent in slow growth. This is when a company develops its nucleus, engages an ecosystem, and identifies market makers. This nontraditional growth is unlikely to be reflected in traditional measures.

However, once the interaction field is built out, and after it reaches a critical threshold of participants and interactions—in which velocity triggers the effects of virality, network, and learning mechanisms—then the business enters, as if without notice, a stage of exponentiality.

It is at this stage that growth skyrockets and the business crosses industries, defies definition, and self-sustains a virtuous cycle that creates opportunity for significant economic and social development and progress.?

Sounds successful to me.

Want to learn more?

Check out my book, The Interaction Field: The Revolutionary New Way to Create Shared Value for Businesses, Customers, and Society.

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