It's been nearly two years since I first spoke with Holly Harlan regarding her experiences as the organizer of Learners' Groups at WIRE-Net in Cleveland.  At the time, I asked Holly what the single most important benefit her members received from participating in these peer discussion forums.  Her answer?  "They make faster decisions."

My experiences with the Pioneer Entrepreneurs community have led me to similar conclusions.  We've found that we can add value to the extent that we can help our members make better business decisions more quickly.  To that end, we've learned some things:

Conversations are an effective and efficient way to fill in the gaps that inevitably exist with our personal portfolios of experience.  However, for a conversation to be productive, there must be an appropriate context.  Time and time again, we've found that conversations are most effective if they emerge from a specific challenge faced by an entrepreneur.  Too often, we've attempted to stimulate a conversation (solution) in search of a challenge (problem).  To the extent that we can help catalyze conversations around real problems in real time, we add value.

The best conversations occur when you involve the right people.  Consequently, we continue to seek ways to facilitate connections among our members, their peers, and other sources of expertise.  In many cases, timeliness of response is as important as perceived expertise.

Furthermore, conversations can be improved by content that informs.  There is no shortage of content available to entrepreneurs.  In fact, in many ways, there is too much.  The right content is that which is available in the right format at the right time to help frame a purposeful conversation.

Easy to say, hard to do.  The payoffs, though, are significant.  Entrepreneurial growth companies account for less than 10% of all businesses but generate more than two-third of economic growth, job creation, and innovation.  To the extent that one can help those companies speed their tactical and strategic decision making cycles, one can expect to add a lot of value.