Collaborative Intelligence- Communities of practice

“A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a craft or a profession.” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice

But the core of this concept is that not only do they share an interest and passion but they work together to learn how to do it better as they interact with each other.

There are three characteristics within a community of practice: The Domain, community, and practice (see link below for details )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVTkpEvT_9k

The concept was originated by Anthropologist Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger as they were studying apprenticeship as a learning model.

Communities of Practice are everywhere and as in individuals we probably belong to many. "Communities of practice have been around for as long as human beings have learned together. At home, at work, at school, in our hobbies, we all belong to communities of practice, a number of them usually. In some we are core members. In many we are merely peripheral. And we travel through numerous communities over the course of our lives." - https://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/

An interesting concept I came across was the Communities of Practice in government.

In the article “Communities of practice in government: Leveraging knowledge for performance” - They bring up four examples of the use of communities of practice within government projects and how they complement formal units. “Through a shared commitment to a domain of knowledge that members care about, a community of practice generates “social capital” that enables new levels of collaboration and coordination: for building and sharing collective knowledge, and for developing members’ skills.”

“Communities help practitioners build knowledge by providing a forum for talking together about problems and developing innovative approaches. They may organize projects to build a new tool—as did SafeCities practitioners who developed an instrument for assessing a city’s capability to reduce gun violence.”

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245706269_Communities_of_practice_in_government_Leveraging_knowledge_for_performance

It seems the government has been using this approach and have found the importance of this type of collaboration. On the website, https://digital.gov/communities/ they have an assigned page called “ Communities of Practice - Come together, learn from others in government,” where people in government (with official credentials) may log in and participate by learning, sharing and collaborating.

A few examples of their topics:

A/B Testing : Using analytics-driven A/B testing practices to validate whether suggested modifications to a digital touchpoint provide optimal benefits for the business and its users.

Artificial Intelligence: Supporting and coordinating the use of artificial intelligence technologies in federal agencies.

G3C: The Government Contact Center Council (G3C) is an organization of contact center leaders from local, state and federal agencies focusing on delivering exceptional customer/citizen experiences.

If this model continues to be used and implemented and uses the resources that have now made collaboration across boundaries easier, we have a chance of solving current and future problems faster and more efficiently.