Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage

400 Pages·2002·4.22 MB·English

by  Hubert Saint-Onge

What people are saying about
Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage
“Practical, focused, specific, detailed. It doesn’t get any better than this! If
you are looking for a case study in supporting and leveraging communi-
ties of practice for business success, this is it. Saint-Onge and Wallace have
created an indispensable guide for increasing knowledge sharing and
learning across the organization.”
—Verna Allee, author, The Knowledge Evolutionand
The Future of Knowledge
“Clarica Life Insurance is one of the most admired knowledge enterprises
in the world. Here is the inside scoop on how Clarica is creating business
value by sharing knowledge through its online communities. Hubert
Saint-Onge, Canada’s best known KM strategist, and Deb Wallace, com-
munity builder par excellence, have written an engaging practitioner’s
guide on how to develop communities of practice as forums for learning
and knowledge sharing.”
—Chun Wei Choo, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Faculty of Informa-
tion Studies, University of Toronto; co-author, Strategic Manage-
ment of Intellectual Capital and Organizational Knowledge, author,
The Knowing Organization
“This book is so valuable because it is intellectually stimulating, and at the
same time, it’s chock full of practical advice. Through their success at
Clarica, Hubert Saint-Onge and Deb Wallace have risen above all of the
chatter about collaboration and have given us a best-of-breed primer for
people who want to get results from communities of practice.”
—Diane Hessan, President & CEO of Communispace Corpora-
tion; author, Customer-Centered Growth: 5 Strategies for Building
Competitive Advantage
“With a wealth of practical experience to augment their insightful case
study analyses, Saint-Onge and Wallace compellingly demonstrate how
communities of practice foster learning and facilitate knowledge sharing
to add value to an organization and enhance its competitive advantage.”
—Lynne C. Howarth, Ph.D., Associate Professor & Dean,
Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto
“Hubert Saint-Onge and Deb Wallace point us to the undeniable core
foundation of knowledge management—that it is, first and foremost, a
collaborative and uniquely human activity. Their book goes beyond a sim-
ple focus on technology to provide a wealth of strategies and tools for the
more challenging, and ultimately more valuable, work of engaging people
directly in the creation and use of knowledge.”
—Marc J. Rosenberg, Ph.D., Senior Director, Diamond Cluster
International; author, E-Learning: Strategies for Delivering Knowl-
edge in the Digital Age
“Many people talk about communities of practice, but few actually know
how to make them thrive and grow! In this book, Hubert Saint-Onge and
Deb Wallace generously share their years of experience, from the strategic
conceptual plane to the tactical implementation process. It is an essential
companion to anyone seriously considering communities in an organiza-
tional setting.”
—Eric E. Vogt, Founder and Director, Communispace Corpora-
tion; CEO, the Interclass Network
“In spite of the billions of dollars we spend on training every year, we now
know that most adult learning happens person-to-person and by actively
applying new ideas. Communities of practice stimulate and support the
type of learning that leads to innovation and better results. This book is a
gold mine for understanding how to stimulate and support communities
of practice.”
—Joyce Wycoff, Co-Founder, InnovationNetwork
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An imprint of Elsevier Science
Amsterdam • Boston • London • New York • Oxford • Paris • San Diego
San Francisco • Singapore • Sydney • Tokyo
Butterworth-Heinemann is an imprint of Elsevier Science.
Copyright © 2003 by Hubert Saint-Onge and Debra Wallace. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other-
wise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, Elsevier-Science
prints its books on acid-free paper whenever possible.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 0-7506-7458-X
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Printed in the United States of America
To Norma and our kids,
Danielle, Jacqueline, David, and Alain
—HSO
To Ian
—DW
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CKNOWLEDGMENTS XV
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NTRODUCTION XIX
Part I: Setting the Context for
Communities of Practice 1
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HAPTER NCREASING APABILITIES IN THE
K -D O 3
NOWLEDGE RIVEN RGANIZATION
Creating Value: Assets in the Knowledge Era, 3
Managing Intangible Assets—The Knowledge Capital Model, 9
New Strategies: Communities of Practice, 12
The Knowledge Capital Initiative: Clarica’s Knowledge
Management Strategy, 13
Clarica’s Knowledge Strategy, 14
Goals of The Knowledge Capital Initiative, 19
The Strategic Capabilities Unit: Clarica’s Organizational Structure in
Support of Knowledge Strategies, 21
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