In the context of implementing a business to business process
integration strategy I am interested in knowing if quatitative
experience exists in using communities of practice to share and
disseminate information and experience about integration problems and
solutions.  If no information can be found that deals specifically
with this subject, I am interested to learn if there are any
quantitative studies about the value of implementing communities of
practice in the corporate environment.

Hello -

Please note:  This answer is not finished until you're satisfied with
it.  If you choose to rate this answer, *please* do so *after* asking
for any necessary information/clarification.  Thank you for your
understanding.

______________________

Firstly, I don't know your budget, but I have located The American
Productivity and Quality Center [QPQC] as an excellent source for
business metrics and performance, specifically in the area of
Communities of Practice.

Unfortunately, there is a steep fee associated with accessing the
contents.  It's $10,000 for the first year, and $9000 each additional
year.  But if you are a sizeable organization needing metrics on a
variety of topics, it may be the way to go.  There are several studies
at this site: http://www.apqc.com.

You'll definitely want to join the Yahoo Groups "Communities of
Practice" discussion list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/com-prac/. 
There are representatives from notable companies that frequent that
forum.  There is a gentleman in that group who has collected such
information, albeit from sources undocumented.  Also, once you join
the group, you'll want to direct your question there, and check out
the files section, where you can download the following file:

Understanding the Benefits and Costs of Communities of Practice
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/com-prac/files/roi%20of%20communities.pdf

Secondly, the following are some sources I have found myself.  I've
done some extensive searching, and it is very difficult to see actual
numbers in terms of the benefit of implementing communities of
practice.  Quantifying such things is very nebulous, because it's
extremely difficult to calculate the actual ROI that has changed as a
result of implementing something so abstract [as agreed upon by a
gentleman from a prominent American company who frequents the Yahoo
group].


SITES
======
Communities of Practice Performance and Evolution
http://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/xeroxp/_004.html

WHITE PAPER ON HOW COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE ARE
RESHAPING PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND IMPROVING
ORGANISATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
AND TRAINING
http://www.reframingthefuture.net/research/wp14302.pdf

[Under "industry initiatives"]
KM Industry Reaches Maturity; Metrics, Organization, Culture, Portal
Tools Identified as Success Factors
http://www.electronicmarkets.org/files/cms/18.php

Evolving Communities of Practice: IBM Global Services Experience
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/404/gongla.html

Computer-Support Communities of Practice
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/cambridge/research.nsf/2b4f81291401771785256976004a8d13/5fe8cf56251d1adf85256c31004dd0b3/$FILE/TR2002-04.pdf

Communities of practice and organizational performance
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/404/lesser.html

Communities of Practice Momentum
http://www.reframingthefuture.net/media/CoP_momentum.html

The Knowledge Network
http://www.sis.slb.com/content/about/horizons/2qtr2002a.asp?printView=true&

Where is the Action in Virtual Communities of Practice?
http://www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~lueg/papers/commdcscw00.pdf.

Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier [sidebar]
www.lahvista.cz/ceconsortium.com/pdf/commprac.pdf 

Measuring Knowledge Management
http://www.kmadvantage.com/docs/km_articles/Measuring_KM.pdf.

Communities of Practice White Paper
http://www.rgsinc.com/publications/pdf/white_papers/Communities_of_Practice.pdf

Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage
http://www.knowinc.com/cop-book/reviews.htm


Additional LInks:
I would contact the individuals on this site for the data they may
have:
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/cambridge/research.nsf/99751d8eb5a20c1f852568db004efc90/67662474af80dba185256b2f007dfe20?OpenDocument

Dmoz Directory
http://dmoz.org/Reference/Knowledge_Management/Knowledge_Flow/Communities_of_Practice/

Contacts:
Jason Sumner at Melcrum Publishing
Jason.sumner@melcrum.com
877-226-2764
[Contact him for potential sources]


Search Strategy:
"communities of practice to"
"communities of practice to" companies
"communities of practice" performance
"uses c of p"
Community Intelligence Labs
"communities of practice" efficacy
"communities of practice" benefit
"communities of practice" effects corporate
"communities of practice" research
"communities of practice" "case study"
"communities of practice" advantage
"communities of practice" ROI
"as a result" "communities of practice
"communities of practice" metrics
"communities of practice" +have +by
"communities of practice" performance metrics
"communities of practice +are" "increase +in"
"communities of practice +are" "according +to"
"communities of practice" "performance measures"
"communities of practice +are" findings
"communities of practice" improvement
"communities of practice" "+have reported"
"communities of practice +are +a key"
"communities of practice" survey

---

Request for Answer Clarification by efeldhaus-ga on 26 Mar 2003 08:01 PST

Hello,

thank you for your research.  I do have a couple of clarifying
questions.

1. I see that you gathered some interesting but general information
sources about the subject.  In your search strategy, however, I did
not see anything that would indicated that you attempted to find
information specific to business process integration or b2bi.  If this
is correct, would you consider drilling down to this subdomain?  I
hope that my intention to collect CoP information related to this
particular problem.

2. My budget for researching this issue is not even close to what it
would cost to get information from the QPQC.  Nonetheless, I was
hoping that the answer would be more conclusive that what you provided
so far.  I am very happy with the general links you provide and some
of the documents that you pointed out do contain information that
touches the subject, i.e. relevance is there.  I am not sure if you
would consider some more in-depth analysis of the found information as
part of the answer to my questions.  I would surely expect it.

---

Clarification of Answer by jbf777-ga on 26 Mar 2003 13:50 PST

Hello -

Thank you for your request for clarification!

The way you structured your question, specifically in your usage of
the word "quantitative," led me to search for any information on the
topic that was of a statistical, numerical nature [e.g. "hard
numbers"].  I may be wrong in my assumption here, as quantitative
doesn't necessarily mean that, according to a dictionary definition.  
This is why I essentially provided links to any "statistical-esque"
information I could find.  Having talked to folks within the
Communities of Practice Yahoo group, as well as doing the research
myself, there is extremely limited information of this "hard numbers"
nature.

I don't know what kind of conclusion you're looking to draw.  E.g.,
Should you implement a CoP environment in your organization?  Are
CoP's valuable in general?  Are they hype?  Do organizations implement
CoP's regularly?

Could you expand upon your question a bit?  How specifically do you
plan on implementing communities of practice?  In what kind of
business?  With what kind of budget?  With what kind of scope?

Thanks for your assistance.

jbf777-ga
GA Researcher

---

Clarification of Answer by jbf777-ga on 26 Mar 2003 13:56 PST

I'd like to change the line in the first paragraph to read: This is
why I essentially provided links to *any* "statistical-esque"
information I could find, in *any* business related category.

I will focus more on the business-to-business subdomain the best that
I can, as soon as I get back some more information from you.  Thanks.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by efeldhaus-ga on 27 Mar 2003 00:58 PST

Thank you for the prompt response.

Firstly, as for what the term "quantitative" should mean in the
context of my question: I am aware that producing hard numbers
relating a matter as subjective as CoP would be hard to do.  In
addition, adoption and implementation of CoP is, at best, in its early
stages, so that statistics on this subject would in any case have to
be treated with care.  Therefore, by quantitative information we
should think of case studies or real life examples that support the
talk of principles and/or theoretical argumentation that can be found
plenty.  In other words: we all know that it makes sense, but what
about people's resistance to change, difficulties in justifying
investment in CoP, etc., or do we know people that claim to have
proven the success of CoP?

Here is some more information to give a better understanding of the
context of my particular implementation:

The oragnisation that I am working for has an extreme distributed
organisation.  Decisions, budgets, responsibilities are all in the
hands of business units, whereby the Corporate Headquarters are a
financial consolidation entity and strategic direction defining body. 
The e-business group for this corporation depends from the CH and has
a support role.  Today the company is formulating their business to
business integration strategy, and as an important element in the
implementation roadmap are CoP.  Why? because there is a vast amount
of knowledge scattered all over the company and it is necessary to
make sure that knowledge, in the particular context of b2bi, is
quickly and swiftly transferred to people performing work in this
area.

Now, beyond the imperative sale of the benefits of CoP, we need to
assess the risks that both the project success and the company could
be facing.  For this, we are looking to learn from others about
concrete problems, cost break downs, change managment issues, etc.

Today, there is still no budget allocated.  The scope of the project
is so far limited to the b2bi effort, but we clearly see this as the
pilot implementation for a major roll out.

I hope that this helps clarify a bit better and I apologise for not
having given a more detailed context at the outset.

---

Clarification of Answer by jbf777-ga on 27 Mar 2003 13:08 PST

In general, it seems the term "Communities of Practice" is synonomous
with the term "knowledge sharing network" -- a group individuals
comprising a like work or task scope.  In this light, it seems to me
that the value of CoP's are independent of the business scope,
initiative, realm, or topic.  B2b integration is just another form of
knowledge.  Whether a company is implementing CoP's for b2b
integration, sourcing, manufacturing, or any such subdivision within a
typical corporate hierarchy, the fundament of connecting people that
are on like "frequencies" knowledge-wise is absolutely imperative, for
obvious reasons.  This is true especially in the case of deregulated
or disjointed companies whose organization is of a modular framework.

CoP's, vis-a-vis our increasingly abstract and information-sharing
world -- corporate or otherwise -- necessitate technological
innovations to be carried out.  In fact, you can hardly divorce
technology from the concept of knowledge sharing in today's corporate
arena.

In the 1980's, Xerox was faced with with an interesting situation with
regard to their tech representatives.  According to "The People Are
the Company" (at FASTCOMPANY by John Seely Brown and Estee Solomon
Gray) aricle, "They found their tech reps often made it a point to
spend time not with customers but with each other. They'd gather in
common areas, like the local parts warehouse, hang around the coffee
pot, and swap stories from the field.  Think how a garden-variety
reengineer would interpret this finding: Here's "low-hanging fruit" --
easy pickings for immediate productivity gains. Simply reroute the
tech reps, cut out the conversation, eliminate the dead time -- and
pocket the savings."

Xerox ultimately chose to see it another way:

"Rather than eliminate the informal conversations in pursuit of
corporate efficiency, we decided to expand them in the name of
learning and innovation. Using the Denver area as a pilot project,
PARC distributed two-way radio headsets to the tech reps. The radio
frequency over which the tech reps communicated became a "knowledge
channel" through which they asked each other questions, identified
problems, and shared new solutions as they devised them.

But the headsets had limitations. 

"For one thing, no one captured the knowledge the tech reps created.
The field staff might communicate in real time to diagnose an
unfamiliar problem and generate a solution, but the insights often
evaporated once they finished the job."

Herein lies a key point: unless the accompanying technology has been
aptly appropriated to underscore the develop of a CoP, they are
destined to be mediocre in effectiveness, at best.

Xerox pursued an answer to this need:

"So we took the tech rep experiment to the next level. In France,
working with Rank Xerox, PARC recently unveiled Eureka, an electronic
"knowledge refinery" that organizes and categorizes a database of tips
generated by the field staff. Technically, Eureka is a relational
database of hypertext documents. In practice, it's an electronic
version of war stories told around the coffee pot -- with the added
benefits of an institutional memory, expert validation, and a search
engine."

Here we can see an empirical example of the institution of technology
to underscore the development of a budding knowledge-sharing
community.  In particular, the acquisition and categorization of
knowledge/data shared among the network is inarguably central to the
knowledge infrastructure that develops within a CoP.  In the case of
Xerox, a universally accessible database for their tech reps became
the tributary wherein the knowledge could easily flow from rep to rep.
 Over time, Xerox pursued the CoP concept on a larger, more formidable
scale with "Jupiter," their "virtual social reality" -- a collection
of audio, video, and communications technologies to help communities
form and flourish.  Web-esque hypertext technologies will play an
integral role in many CoP's as well.  Intranets, or "networks within"
a company, are already fulfilling roles in this capacity in many a
corporation.  In addition, there are companies that develop and market
CoP software as ready-made solutions to ever-increasing
corrporate-level knowledge networking demands.

National Semiconductor is another company implementing CoP's -- one
that has gone further than any other company in promoting and
catalyzing CoPs.

"And it's done so for hardheaded business reasons. Over the past five
years, National has experienced a dramatic -- and at times wrenching -
transformation. In the late 1980s, the company built an array of
high-volume, low-margin, commodity chips -- "jelly beans" in industry
jargon. When its competitive environment changed, its business model
collapsed.  A new CEO, Gil Amelia, arrived in 1991 and began a process
of restructuring and rationalization. Now the agenda has changed from
cutting costs to growing -- and from commodity manufacturing to
product leadership. Part of National's strategy involves building its
core competence in mixed-signal technology -- computer chips that
function as the electronic interface between the "real world" of voice
and video and the "digital world" of computing and communications.
Communities of practice are playing a central role in this
redefinition. At one level, they energize and mobilize the company's
engineers -- the critical people for a company in transition from
slashing headcount to pioneering markets. They also shape and enact
strategy. A CoP focused on communication signal processing (an
application of mixed-signal technology) includes engineers from a
variety of product lines. This community, built slowly over an
18-month period, has gained a powerful voice in the company's
strategy."

Specifically in the b2b Integration area, companies such as Verizon
are turning to companies like Starpoint solutions to develop
solutions:

"In order to streamline operations and reduce overhead costs, Verizon
wanted to implement a webMethods-based business-to-business (B2B)
exchange that would enable Internet-based integration of enterprise
applications with those of its business partners. Starpoint is
currently engaged at Verizon to help extend its webMethods hub
application and is also working with Verizon partners to design and
develop customized spoke implementations. Verizon's webMethods
solution provides a rapid, reliable, and secure exchange that links
processes, systems, and exchanges with its partners. Starpoint's
experts are working with Verizon to help expand its B2B exchange
through integration with other enterprise systems."  [See more at
http://starpoint.com/clients/verizon.html]

Hitachi is another, employing a company called Contivo for software
solutions in info management:

"Hitachi America used Contivo's technology for business document
content linking, supporting the company's ongoing activities to map
internal applications, such as SAP, to XML running on webMethod's
platform. Using industry-leading technology, Contivo reduced Hitachi
America's manual effort to build links by analyzing the relationships
between business documents and creating maps to configure enterprise
software systems. Valuable knowledge about new business documents is
retained in an evolving knowledge base that is made available to
Hitachi America and all subscribed trading partners." [See more
http://www.bitpipe.com/data/detail?id=1006020594_950&type=RES&x=1261152683]

The majority of technical resistance to the development of successful
CoP's will lie within the constraints and mishaps of current
technology to facilitate the linking of the CoP's constituents.  It's
absolutely vital that any technology employed to underscore a CoP must
encapsulate the most relevant data and provide effortless
accessibility to it.  Time is money, and any time lost is money lost.

Fiscal resistance to actuate CoP's in the workplace will ultimately
lie on the shoulders of those who fail to see CoP's relevance and
indispensability.  This old-school thinking ties closely with those at
the individual employee level who may resist the development of CoP's
due to their own personal fears of embracing new technologies and new
ways of communicating.


"The People Are the Company"
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/01/people.html

---

Knowledge Management [b2b]
http://www.harvardcomputing.com/Knowledge/KM/km.html

---

"Intranet Boundaries: Social Actors and Systems Integration"
http://lamb.cba.hawaii.edu/research/intranetboundaries.pdf

---

How E-Business Affects Knowledge Capital
Oligopsonies in B2B exchanges are likely to inhibit corporate gains in
knowledge
http://www.strassmann.com/pubs/km/11-2000.pdf

----

"B2B e-commerce adoption decisions in Taiwan: The interaction of
organizational, industrial, governmental and cultural factors"
http://www.public.asu.edu/~wfoste1/final%20HICSS%202003%20paper.doc
or http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:uFu2GBOcCGEC:www.public.asu.edu/~wfoste1/final%2520HICSS%25202003%2520paper.doc+%22knowledge+management%22+%22affecting+b2b%22&hl=en&start=2&ie=UTF-8

---

Excellent article containing case studies of CoP's:

Effective Virtual Teams Through Communities Of Practice
ftp://ftp.mentor.strath.ac.uk/mansci/papers/wp0009.pdf

---

Conversation from SAP info, touches on B2B:

http://www.sap.info/index.php4?ACTION=noframe&url=http://www.sap.info/public/en/interview.php4/page/2/article/comvArticle-193353c63aee3469d7/en

"What areas of e-business favor the creation of business communities?
Mack: According to a survey of recent trends by telemat.de, knowledge
communities and communities of practice are most prevalent: 28.6 per
cent appear in the B2B area. Second place, at 20.8 per cent, goes to
classic portal sites with community elements, such as discussion
forums and chat. Here too, these communities appear primarily in the
B2B area. Customer service communities for product support occupy
third place, in the B2C and the B2B areas. Project communities (10.4
per cent) in B2B follow. These communities support collaboration
between virtual teams. Other examples include fun communities, image
communities, and branding communities, which register only 2.6 per
cent in Germany."

---


Additional articles on CoP's:

Guerilla KM
http://www.guerrillakm.org/ev.php?URL_ID=1330&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC

KM Advantage:
http://www.kmadvantage.com/cop_directory.htm

Bitpipe.com may be another good source for articles related to
knowledge management, b2b, and the like.

---

Clarification of Answer by jbf777-ga on 27 Mar 2003 13:09 PST

sorry, that first sentence should read: "a group OF individuals"

Very good job in refining the answer based on a dialogue of
clarifications.  The content of the answers was not only relevant but
useful as well.  A better formulation of the question would probably
have lead to the same results in less interactions.  Nonetheless, the
approach from going from a very general question down to details seems
to have added additional solidity to the overall result.

Thank you very much for the kind words + generous tip!