7 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

effectiveness. What are the implications for the organizations and their members given the
changing organizational environment that demands increasingly faster cycle of new
knowledge creation?
9.6 Towards Communities of Practice
Communities of Practice(CoPs) offer an effective solution for new knowledge creation.
At the simplest level, CoPs are small groups of people who have worked together over a
period of time. Not a team, not a task force, probably not even an authorized or identified
group. People in CoPs can perform the same job or collaborate on a shared task or work
together on a product . They are peers in the execution of "real work." What holds them
together is a common sense of purpose and a real need to know what each other knows.
Through the active process of the community, tacit knowledge is shared—thus ensuring
that it is not ‘locked up’ in one individual. Such communities may typically evolve
through stages like preparation, warm-up, operation, and eventual consolidation. Exchange
of tips, stories, case studies, and jokes form important knowledge transfer mechanisms and
bonds within the community. There may be many communities of practice within a
single organization and most people may belong to more than one of them. The challenges
for those responsible for harnessing the organization’s knowledge creation activity are to
identify and nurture these groups and create conditions that facilitate the emergence of
new CoPs.
CoPs which is an outgrowth of the quality circles and the evolution of networked/ learning
organizations, represents a way of making explicit an organization’s untapped
brainpower, creativity and potential. These communities can become centers of expertise
which can be highly leveraged in an organization prepared to capitalize upon economic
change and unexpected business opportunities.
In the traditional view, CoPs may be perceived as professional societies or they may
represent collections of people who transcend any individual discipline, society or
profession. If the future belongs to those who are able to transform boundaries, then
participants in these CoPs may represent the leadership of tomorrow.
But there needs to be one compelling force which binds the entire organization together—
one that creates a common language and shared purpose. Leadership must come from the
top-down, bottom-up and middle-out. In other words, everyone has ownership.
Innovation strategy may be the one way to create a simple solution amidst all the
complexity. Every function has undergone dramatic change over the past few years—as a
function, as a profession and as a collection of expertise across traditional boundaries.
Each has learnt from the other and contributed to their body of knowledge. Individual
CoPs have evolved on virtually every topic imaginable. It is this cross-boundary sharing
and learning which is accelerating the momentum of progress. Today, we see the
emergence of the collaborative enterprise as well as cross industry collaboration,
marshalling the talents of people throughout the organization to create and move ideas.
They have discovered the value of their complementary competencies and how they
contribute to the whole. They are all active participants in this rapidly maturing
community of knowledge practice. This is precisely the reason that the movement towards
Knowledge Management and Knowledge Creation are so fundamental and CoPs are fertile
grounds for knowledge creation. However it is common to hear people lament : “But my
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