The co-existence of Knowledge Management and Communities

Communities are the building blocks of the knowledge management (KM) framework of an organization. Like a physical gathering or Community, the KM communities comprise a network of practitioners in an organization who collaborate virtually to share knowledge and build a repertoire of resources that they take back to their work.

Communities can be of many designs depending upon the KM strategy of an organization: a community of practice, the community of experts, communities of interests, innovation communities so on and so forth. Since these Communities are virtual, they have global reach thus enabling people from different geographies and times to collaborate in pursuit of ideas and knowledge.

Now, let us talk about the basic types of Communities and how they align with an organization’s KM strategy:

1 - Communities of Practice: Commonly known as CoPs, these Communities can be defined as a “group of professionals” who collaborate to develop and disseminate knowledge, best practices, and insights.

2 - Communities of Experts: Known as CoEs, these are the Communities, where experts in a specific subject/skill, gather together to share best practices, create and disseminate knowledge to help global practitioners upgrade or build work skills to make work easier and how.

3 - Innovation Communities: These are communities created with the specific purpose of giving practitioners a platform to share breakthrough ideas, knowledge to create innovative solutions leading to better selling and delivering.

4 - Communities of Interest: These are informal Communities where like-minded individuals connect over shared interests; it could be anything work or non-work related. But the idea is to share ideas and insights which leads to the flow of knowledge.

Knowledge Management is all about ensuring that the practitioners have ready access to organizational knowledge and expertise. Communities ensure that the collective intelligence of a practice garnered over time is channelized and easily accessible round the clock to organization-wide practitioners. KM initiatives and systems cannot be separated from the communities, they co-exist and should be mapped so when defining the KM goals.