Product Description

Today's marketplace is fueled by knowledge. Yet organizing systematically to leverage knowledge remains a challenge. Leading companies have discovered that technology is not enough, and that cultivating communities of practice is the keystone of an effective knowledge strategy.

Communities of practice come together around common interests and expertise- whether they consist of first-line managers or customer service representatives, neurosurgeons or software programmers, city managers or home-improvement amateurs. They create, share, and apply knowledge within and across the boundaries of teams, business units, and even entire companies-providing a concrete path toward creating a true knowledge organization.

In Cultivating Communities of Practice, Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder argue that while communities form naturally, organizations need to become more proactive and systematic about developing and integrating them into their strategy. This book provides practical models and methods for stewarding these communities to reach their full potential-without squelching the inner drive that makes them so valuable.

Through in-depth cases from firms such as DaimlerChrysler, McKinsey & Company, Shell, and the World Bank, the authors demonstrate how communities of practice can be leveraged to drive overall company strategy, generate new business opportunities, tie personal development to corporate goals, transfer best practices, and recruit and retain top talent. They define the unique features of these communities and outline principles for nurturing their essential elements. They provide guidelines to support communities of practice through their major stages of development, address the potential downsides of communities, and discuss the specific challenges of distributed communities. And they show how to recognize the value created by communities of practice and how to build a corporate knowledge strategy around them.

Essential reading for any leader in today's knowledge economy, this is the definitive guide to developing communities of practice for the benefit-and long-term success-of organizations and the individuals who work in them.

Etienne Wenger is a renowned expert and consultant on knowledge management and communities of practice in San Juan, California. Richard McDermott is a leading expert of organization and community development in Boulder, Colorado. William M. Snyder is a founding partner of Social Capital Group, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120084 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From the Publisher
 Written by the top authority on the subject, this is the definitive guide to developing communities of practice and integrating them into a company-wide knowledge strategy.  The term, "communities of practice," was first coined by Etienne Wenger, who researched this organizational form.  Provides a framework and practical tools to design and develop communities of practice and to launch a community of practice-based knowledge initiative.  Details the five stages of development and mentions problems that are likely to arise at each stage---and then provides ways to prevent these and solve them. ● Offers richly illustrated examples from companies such as DaimlerChrysler, McKinsey, the World Bank, and Shell.

About the Author
Etienne Wenger is a renowned expert and consultant on knowledge management and communities of practice in San Juan, California.

Customer Reviews

A dreadfully disappointing book.
I arrived at this book via Situated Learning, the book Etienne Wenger wrote with Jean Lave, and his own earlier book, Communities of Practice. These present fundamental understandings on the nature of knowledge, practice and meaning in organisations. As a practitioner, I would very much like to see a follow-up, to address the practical implementation of these perspectives in the workplace. Unfortunately, Cultivating Communities of Practice fails to meet this need.
In their desperation to be friendly to a non-academic audience, the authors have avoided anything challenging to conventional management thinking, watering down the original and valuable concepts of the earlier books. The Community of Practice, which was previously "an intrinsic condition for the existence of knowledge" is now an optional - "a practical way to manage knowledge as an asset". Instead of being a pre-requisite for meaning and practice, it has become merely the latest management idea - a useful place for people to exchange ideas and help each other with problems. Problems and solutions are thereby re-located back into the minds of individuals, rather than being socially constructed.
There are occasional paragraphs - for instance on stewardship and institutionalisation - which briefly touch on the real issues, but for the most part the content is anodyne, and would be better suited to beginner's guide to running a social club.
A dreadfully disappointing book.

Do your job better - because you want to
For years I've experienced a work environment where my time is cluttered with many meetings that have little to do with my real work (Information System architecture and design) and few that do. Reading through this book has given me the motivation and means to go about improving my work situation along with other colleagues who want to do a better job, simply because we want to do so.

There are plenty of practical illustrations of the concepts taken from the work place. These help you spot the starting points for your work in your own organisation. If this is your first encounter with Communities of Practice then the book is a good starting point. Making the subject accessible in a way that other academic discourses on the subject do not.

An unusual guide to developing communities of practice
Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder have written an exceptionally clear and honest book. While they obviously are deeply committed to communities of practice and exuberant in embracing the concept - particularly in the realm of knowledge management - they also have observed enough of these communities to see how they can fail to crystallize, can go bad or can survive but never gain recognition. This gives a distinctly realistic edge to their methodical book. The authors work through the definitions, core components and guiding principles of these communities, and describe how they fit within existing formal structures. They illustrate their claims with numerous examples. getAbstract advocates this solid introduction to communities of practice to two groups of readers: anyone interested in knowledge management and anyone interested in community development, including organizational culture.