Capacity
Relates to the ability, facility or capability to do something, to perform an activity, to produce, perform or deploy. We can also see it as a "cross cutting modality of network-wide and inter-network intervention" that often overlaps or is part of interventions in governance, organizational structure, and processes, education, etc.
Capacity relates to "abilities", "attributes" and a "process". It is an attribute of agents, is shaped by, adapting to and reacting to external factors and actors, but it is not something external — it is internal to agents.
The concept must be considered at all levels (types of agents or actors): individual, open venture, OVN, or an entire ecosystem.
Capacity can be seen as a form of wealth and as an attribute of an agent.
Capacity development
A set of activities designed to unleash, strengthen, create, adapt and maintain capacity. A change process internal to agents, since capacity is an attribute of agents.
People also use capacity building which is less desirable term since it implies a structured approach based on a blueprint.
At the first level, people talking about capacity development in the context of an organization (project, venture, network) often refer to growing the numbers of affiliated agents (onboarding), acquisition of resources, including currency (crowdsourcing). In traditional terms, this is equivalent to HR and Finance.
Diving deeper, capacity of an organization is built from a clear
- policy framework and governance
- institutional development and legal framework
- infrastructure, methodologies, processes
- participation, including onboarding processes and incentives
- feedback mechanisms
- available resources, affiliates and their skills
- role in the larger ecosystem, niche, relations
- sustainability and regeneration
Metrics
About tools and measures for assessing capacity development, setting goals / targets and evaluate performance of capacity development activities.
Regenerative capacity
It is the ability to continue to occupy a niche, to perform long-term within an environment, by balancing extraction (from the environment) with replenishment (giving back to the environment), or by adjusting the rate of extraction to the natural rate of regeneration of the environment.
It relates to the nature and the quality of links, bonds between the agent and the environment. In other words, the flows between the agent and the environment must sustain a symbiotic relationship among the agent and other agents and a sustainable use of natural resources.
Relations to infrastructure
Infrastructure should be designed with accumulation mechanisms in mind, to increase individual and organizational capacity. For example, documentation (as a process) encouraged by the work culture and by the methods in place, supported by collaborative documentation tools is an example of mechanism of accumulation of information and knowledge, which improves the ability of the organization to act, produce stuff.