Purpose – This paper provides considerations for organizations interested in supporting knowledge sharing among employees based on experiences and recent research. Experiences emphasize the need to discover and recognize unofficial communities of practice; support distributed leadership; support control of the communities by their members; enable interaction and learning opportunities; consider social media carefully; leaving choices up to the community members; and an approach to calculating the value of communities of practice (CoPs) based on knowledge management. Design/methodology/approach – The approach of this paper focuses on six basic themes from research and experiences in the literature with CoPs. Lessons learned and recommendations are provided. Findings – Lessons from CoPs focus on the need for distributed leadership or all engage, participate and share responsibilities; control of the community belongs to the members, and they decide membership; interaction and learning opportunities are essential to support competitive advantage for the organization and continuous development for the community members. Social media is unproven in the workplace and should be approached carefully, as the CoP must determine benefits and advantages. An approach to calculating value is proposed, based on calculating the value of knowledge management. Practical implications – As CoPs continue to evolve, organizations play a key role in supporting their development which in turn provides competitive advantage for the organization. Continuous learning and development are the key aspects of these communities, including opportunities for leadership, decision-making and professional development. Technology can play an important role in CoPs, but must be supported by the membership. The return on investment (ROI) may be significant and learning opportunities provide the potential for personal development and the enhancement of organizational performance. Originality/value – This review offers insights into experiences and findings from CoPs, supports distributed leadership and control of the community among the members, strongly recommends interaction and learning opportunities and addresses social media as a possibility to support the CoP. The ROI potential supports and encourages organizations to develop employees and enhance overall performance.
Fostering employee innovationFaced with dire economic circumstances plaguing the current competitive landscape, organizations are under more pressure that ever to innovate if they wish to survive. Contrary to some opinions, it is not always the members of the corporate research and development department or members of top management teams who are the innovative geniuses of an organization. On the contrary, it is just as likely that ideas originate with employees located closer to the bottom of the organizational pyramid; the ''front-line troops'' who, directly impacted by the problem and intimately familiar with concomitant dynamics, are coming up with creative solutions, and then applying those solutions to resolve problems or pursue opportunities. The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance and value of leveraging the creative capital residing within employees to elicit collective organizational innovation.Consider the ubiquitous Post-It Notes marketed by 3-M Corporation. An employee was faced with the task of determining if there was a use for an adhesive that, while sticky, was very weak in its stickiness. Under normal circumstances this might have been a product with no obvious use, thus destined for the trash bin of failed product ideas. However, during church choir practice the 3M employee observed that choir members complained because their place markers would not stay in their hymn books. Applied to paper, the adhesive proved a perfect solution for keeping page markers in place.
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