What is a community good for? And what is it NOT good for?

Insight Communities are great when:

You need ongoing iterative feedback from the same group of people over an extended period of time (one month or more).
You need to collect both qualitative AND quantitative feedback.
You don't know what you don't know, e.g., you need to do some exploring on evolving concepts, collect some ideas from the market, do focus groups to probe deeper, then maybe a targeted feature ranking survey, and then some qualitative research to explore those feature needs.
You know what you need to know, but don't know where to start, communities can provide the flexibility for your insight needs to change over time to and adapt to your business needs.
You need quick turn feedback.
You want to engage with a select group of customers and co-create.

Communities are NOT great when:

You just need one "quick and cheap" research project.
If you just need to do a set of online focus groups or threaded discussions (a community will be overkill and not worth the work to set it up).
You are projecting to a broader population and need market sizing or will need data for public consumption.
If you do not have the resources or budget to engage the community and keep it vibrant long-term.
You just need to do quick quantitative surveys, e.g., you just need a panel management tool, not a community.