Relevance and importance

SME managers interested in new markets, technology transfer and growth need new impulses, ideas and knowledge outside their everyday work environment and regular team members. Participation in a community of practice means knowledge sharing with people representing common interests but also diversified sources of information and best practices.

Using Internet as networking environment, virtual forums, knowledge portals and e-learning tools makes communication with distant colleagues rapid and enables to accumulate lessons learned in the digital format. That is convenient for searching and re-using practical knowledge and actually saves time of a busy entrepreneur if networking is well targeted.

Community of practice will be useful for its members for monitoring new technological development trends, market developments and business models but also for discovering new business opportunities that may lead to strategic alliances. Community of practice is however not a brokering system for matching partners in order to negotiate a quick business deal. A community that focuses mainly on haggling over new business offers is not able to build enough trust for sharing experience and broader visions.

Overview

Involvement in a community of practice is a good way for an innovative enterprise to keep pace with rapid developments in technology, changing demands of customers, social changes and changes in the global competitive environment and to develop technology transfer capabilities. In fast-moving industries even competitors may form e community of practice to keep up with constant technological changes. There are many unused opportunities to build communities of practice inside business sectors but even more communities that cross borders between different industries and countries. In the European Union a challenge is to develop communities of practice that bring together SMEs from old and new member states, from different regions of Europe.

Community of practice pass through stages of a loose network that has potential to become more connected, coalescing, maturing through increased knowledge sharing, stewardship and possible transformation.

Communities of practice provide homes for identities, they are organised around what matters to their members. In a sea of information it helps members to sort out what they pay attention to. The core of active members becomes the centre of expertise but at their boundaries new members and ideas are continuously engaged.

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Recommendations and practical tips

	Use international projects, including projects supported by the European Union, for nurturing new communities of practice in order to continue learning from each other after the project task has been accomplished.
	Focus on the common purpose. Discuss issues, where participants have shared understanding and interests that form the common ground for discussing best practices and knowledge sharing. Agree on learning priorities and on possible inputs that community members are anticipated to offer in order to balance rights and obligations, contribution and gains of "community citizens". Accept that contribution and learning take place in different ways.
	Make clear, what knowledge is retained in living ways and what information exchange can routinized in the community.
	Negotiate rules that will encourage openness and trust and give guarantees for protecting intellectual property of participants. Capture past experiences and encourage reusing accumulated knowledge.
	Support new members in their efforts to become good learning community citizens, create situations, where they can disclose their competences and present new interests for exploration.
	Combine on-line communication and face-to-face interaction if possible.

Warnings and potential pitfalls

E-learning and knowledge management technology is the easy part of supporting knowledge sharing. The really tricky part is agreeing the priorities of learning and creating trust for knowledge sharing.

Knowledge and learning are social in nature. Learning is not limited to receiving new information from other community members. You also learn by presenting your insights and risky ideas to others and by trying to convince them, by testing their reaction. Members need self-confidence and responsiveness for receiving and applying feedback from the community as an impulse for self-criticism.

You need champions able to inspire other community members but too high profile of a limited number of people may turn the rest of the community passive.

Some people can become virtual communication addicts.

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