Understanding the essence of a knowledge community comes from seeing how its members and influencers interact over time. They share knowledge, values, and connections to evolve the community much like an ecosystem. Our simple cause-and-effect intuition can often fail us when faced with anticipating these more complex systems.

For example, an article from the New York Times ("Giving Away Information, but Increasing Revenue", April 16, 2007) illustrates how 'foolishly giving away value' produced a clear surprise.

Not all charity is rewarded, but, with community dynamics, the situation is more complex than our intuition would let us believe.