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Knowledge Sharing and Communities of Practice 165

this kernel. Personalization efforts will, to some extent, work against this sense of
community as different members would receive different content.
Different knowledge-sharing technologies or channels should always be seen as
complementary and as mutually exclusive. All types of communications are some form
of conversation. Each communication medium has its strengths and weaknesses. It is
important to choose the appropriate mix of channels in order to optimize knowledge
sharing. Most communities organize their knowledge-sharing interactions as informal
exchanges between peers. Communication genres are chosen primarily on the basis
of the developing relationship between community members ( Zucchermaglio
and Talamo 2003 ). The choice of communication medium appears to be a function
of specifi c professional tasks and the stage of maturity of community development.
The authors conducted a longitudinal study over a three-year period of an inter-
organizational CoP. For example, it took about six months for communications
to become predominately informal and e-mail-based among community members.
Concurrent with this was an increasing formality in how community members
communicated with those external to the community, which indicates that a sense
of community boundary has been established.
One important type of knowledge sharing that occurs in a community involves the
evolution of a best practice (an improved way of doing things) or lessons learned
(learning from both successful and unsuccessful events). Figure 5.7 shows how a good
idea can evolve and be transferred within CoPs in order to be ultimately incorporated

Good Local best Industry
Good idea
practice practice best practice

• BP candidate • Has impact • Recognized by • Recognized by
within company company experts outside experts
• Unproven
• Technique, • Shown to be best • Acknowledged
• Intuitive
method that approach for some as state-of-the-art
• Need to analyze improves or all parts of the by industry
performance organization
• Used successfully
on one or a few • Used by other • Available for
problems/projects groups on reuse throughout
different company
assignments

Figure 5.7
Knowledge-sharing example best practice/lesson learned (adapted from APQC 1999 , American
Productivity and Quality Centre, http://www/apqc.org).