Webcast:
A new vision for communities of practice is emerging in light of the capabilities provided by today's collaborative technologies. The implications of this new vision are significant enough that they may also affect our more traditional notions of HR/ Organizational Development and knowledge management as well as how we build people relationships across the extended enterprise. But, while the new technologies make greater participation and contribution easier, the lessons learned from previous efforts to share knowledge, nurture team-based connections and stimulate innovation are still relevant.
Presenters
Brook Manville is Executive Vice President of the United Way of America, and Director of its new Center for Community Leadership. In this role, he is helping to lead system-wide transformation of the United Way around a new strategy of achieving community impact. Critical to this strategy is developing a systemwide, integrated approach to the management and development of ideas, knowledge and human capital-the purpose of the Center.Mr. Manville is the author of pioneering articles on organizational learning and knowledge management in Fast Company, Datamation, The Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and industry publications such as Knowledge Management Review. He is also the author (with Josiah Ober) of A Company of Citizens: What the World's First Democracy Teaches Leaders About Creating Great Organizations (Harvard Business School Press, 2003). He speaks frequently at conferences and industry groups on these and related topics.
Etienne Wenger is a globally recognized thought leader in the field of communities of practice, who was featured by Training Magazine in their "A new Breed of Visionaries" series. A pioneer of the "communities of practice" research, he is author and co-author of seminal articles and books on the topic, including Situated Learning, where the term was coined, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, where he lays out a theory of learning based on the concept of communities of practice, and Cultivating Communities of Practice: a Guide to Managing Knowledge, addressed to practitioners in organizations. His work as researcher, author, and consultant has influenced both thinking and practice in a wide variety of fields, including business, education, government, and social theory. His new research project, Learning for a small planet, is a cross-sectoral investigation of the nature of learning practices and institutions at the dawn of the new millennium.
