We are often asked, how many people does it take to manage and moderate an Ideas community. Obviously the answer to that question is going to depend on the size of the community and the complexity of your organization. That being said, I thought I'd try to map the various roles and responsibilities. (Download PowerPoint File )

It could be that you have one person managing the community and they wear a number of different hats. For example the project manager, community manager, and innovation manager could all be the same person. In fact, that same individual might also be your executive sponsor, Salesforce administrator, and moderator. There are a number of other roles listed below where you'll tap into shared resources. For example, Legal, HR, PR, Marketing, and your Ambassadors might be asked for a couple hours here and there.

It is also important to strike the right balance. You want to devote enough resources to make the initiative successful, but it's easy to get sucked into the perception that you need an army to manage the community, when in fact it's pretty amazing how scalable and self-policing they are. Even huge communities often time only have 1 or 2 people full time.