The Growth Distillery, in collaboration with Present Company, has released a study highlighting the significance of communities in long-term business growth, with the gaming sector identified as a global exemplar.

The study, titled 'Virtuous Value Creation: A Briefing On Community', discovered that a thriving community utilises a simple value exchange model. Businesses contribute to key consumer needs and, in return, consumers enable businesses to pursue their objectives.

"If you want to see what the future holds, look to gaming. This ecosystem has fundamentally changed the way communities can be built, nurtured and virtuously grown," said The Growth Distillery Director, Dan Krigstein. "Gaming companies have been amongst the very best at realising the importance of nurturing their communities in not only an authentic way but an altruistic one. They have demonstrated that communities can not only build better experiences but establish new lines of business and grow lifetime customer value through mutual acts of service. This space presents a fundamentally new model of virtuous value creation and a new level of fandom."

The research identified eight community-first principles for businesses to recognise, nurture, and capture the value a community generates, including points around experience, value-exchange, and embracing risk.

"Rather than measure sentiment after the fact, we found that analysis of community and a business's commitment to virtuous value creation provided leading indicators related to growth and value, ahead of strategic decisions," said Managing Director of Present Company, Marty Wirth. "This will provide businesses a new way to prioritise initiatives and ultimately represent a new horizon for growth."

Both Krigstein and Wirth emphasised the importance of community in business growth and value creation, suggesting that the gaming sector's community-centric approach could provide a blueprint for other industries.

The Growth Distillery is an independent research think-tank, powered by News Corp Australia.