When your organization has a knowledge gap or an innovation shortage, it’s time to call in the CoPs. Communities of practice (CoPs) are ancient in origin but thoroughly modern in their most sophisticated forms. We can recognize them in the “corporations” of craftsmen in ancient Rome and in the guilds of the Middle Ages. A more recent, much-cited example is the one formed by the copy machine repair technicians at Xerox Corporation. In a knowledge-driven economy, CoPs have attracted strong interest because of their promise in preserving, generating, and communicating knowledge and innovation.

Every writer feels compelled to invent their own, but here are two representative definitions of community of practice: “A group of self-governing people whose practice is aligned with strategic imperatives and which is challenged to create shareholder value by generating knowledge and increasing capabilities.” (From “Strategic Communities of Practice: Leveraging Knowledge Capital,” by Hubert Saint-Onge and Deb Wallace.) “A group of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.” (From Cultivating Communities of Practice, by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William Snyder.)

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