- The paper starts off with numerous real world examples of workplaces where knowledge is shared among peers. The author introduces communities of practice in this way. - Communities of practice define themselves along three dimensions - What it is about - How it functions - What capability it has produced - Communities of practice are fundamentally self organising systems. Even when there is an external mandate the community produces the practice. - A community of practice typically goes through six stages of development - - Potential - People facing similar situations without a shared practice - Coalescing - Members come together and recognise their potential - Active - Members engage in developing a practice - Dispersed - Members no longer engage but the community is alive - Memorable - The community is no longer central but people still remember it - Community of practise is something that defines itself. Rather than depend on a charter the practice evolves over time. A semi permeable periphery creates opportunities for both outsiders and new comers to join in. - Communities of practice don't necessarily have a common goal or task. They have a common learning and seeking of knowledge and exist because participation has value to the members. - At the same time communities of practice are not merely networks. They are all about something and they have a shared identity and a collective process of learning. - In this paper communities of practice is discussed largely here as part of organisations or companies. The paper notes how within an organisation communities of practice can serve to exchange and interpret information, retain knowledge, steward competencies and provide homes for identities. - Communities of practice thrive from having many different types of internal leadership that all need to be nurtured - inspirational leaders that provide new thoughts and ideas, day to day leaders that organise activities, classificatory leaders that organise information, interpersonal leaders that weave the social fabric and boundary leaders that connect to other communities. - Balancing design and emergence is critical in such communities. There should not be too much micro management but at the same time some amount of nurturing is necessary for such practices to thrive. "No community can fully design the learning of another; but conversely no community can fully design its own learning." ---- Wenger, Etienne. "Communities of practice: Learning as a social system." _Systems thinker_ 9.5 (1998): 2-3. - [Link](https://www.academia.edu/download/56672918/Learningasasocialsystem.pdf)