Almost no one is positioned to study this work across the whole field as most research lives inside a single studio or platform, behind a single set of walls. Because the DLC convenes leaders from across the industry, we can generate cross-ecosystem research that no single company can: a view of what digital leadership actually looks like, what works, and where the gaps remain, drawn from leaders everywhere rather than one corner of the map.
Each year, our Impact & Outlook Report turns the field’s collective experience into evidence the whole industry can use. We also publish more focused reports throughout the year, such as subject-matter and cohort-specific studies that dig into a particular topic or group. And it’s one of the clearest benefits of partnership: if you sponsor content in your area of expertise, we can show you how real leaders learn and apply it, insight into the field you won’t find anywhere else.
Co-produce research with us
Because of how the program is built, we can see something almost no one else can: how real community leaders learn a topic – how they take it in, make sense of it, and put it into practice. So if there’s a subject you know deeply and want to build content around, partnership means more than funding it. We can study how the field receives and applies that content, and show you how your work actually lands with the people doing the job, insight you can’t get anywhere else, on the topic you care about most.
In our inaugural Industry Insight report, the participants in our pilot cohort scored their own community’s codes of conduct against an evidence-based rubric, giving us insight into where we are getting it right, where we have room to grow, and what we are seeing consistently fall short across the field.
Earlier this year, the DLC Leadership Program onboarded a pilot cohort 84 community managers, digital leaders, and games researchers and academics.
What 80+ digital leaders across 20 countries told us about their training, their barriers, and the gap the DLC was built to fill.
