Community of Practice

The term Community of Practice comes from Meg Wheatley & Deborah Frieze, "Using Emergence to Take Social Innovations to Scale." It is a group of people who share particular interests and form committed relationships to advance a field of knowledge and practice with a focus on sharing discoveries with a wider audience of people doing related work. A given Community of Practice may be local, with members able to engage in face-to-face meetings on a regular basis. Others are non-local in that they transcend the normal barriers of geographical space using whatever communications technologies are available. Non-local Communities of Practice are likely to be strongest when their members are also grounded in local Communities of Practice.