Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage

How can you build a successful community of practice that is integrally linked to your company's strategic vision? Learn from the first-hand experience of Hubert Saint-Onge, recognized by Fortune magazine as a leader in the field of knowledge capital, and co-author Debra Wallace, the people responsible for a recent project to establish a community of practice for independent agents at Clarica Life Insurance Company voted one of the most admired knowledge enterprises in the world by practitioners and researchers. 'Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage' combines theory and practice to outline a model for developing successful communities of practice and proposes a direction for establishing communities of practice as an integral part of the organizational structure. Saint-Onge and Wallace relate what worked, what didn't, and why as they tell the story from inception through implementation to assessment. Whether you're developing communities of practice or want to learn how to leverage existing communities for strategic gain, this book provides you with everything you need to launch successful communities of practice in your organization.

Part 1 Setting the Context for Communities of Practice; Chapter 1 Increasing Capabilities in the Knowledge-Driven Organization; Chapter 2 Communities of Practice; Chapter 3 Situating Communities of Practice in a Strategic Context; Chapter 4 A Blueprint for Building communities Of Practice; Part 2 Building Communities of Practice in a Strategic Context; Chapter 5 Community Development Process Model Overview; Chapter 6 Phase I: Community Design and Launch; Chapter 7 Phase II: Community Implementation and Growth; Chapter 8 Establishing Community value; Part 3 Creating Communities; Chapter 9 Community Design and Launch; Chapter 10 Community Implementation and Growth; Chapter 11 Communities as Catalysts for Change;

Professional Practice & Development

Hubert Saint-Onge

Fantastic. We have been waiting for a book like this: the unabridged story of building a strategic, web-based community of practice in an organization that has made a full commitment to the idea. You get it all: the conceptual framework, the business rationale, the detailed processes and workplans, the successes and the missteps, the actual documents used, and the vision of where it is all going. A must-read for anyone serious about building strategic capabilities in organizations.' - Etienne Wenger, co-author, 'Cultivating Communities of Practice''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 collaborat