It is not communities of practice themselves that are new but the need for organizations to become more intentional and systematic about ‘managing’ knowledge...

Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder, 2002

A knowledge strategy is a concise, clear articulation of the role of knowledge in the enterprise’s mission and goals and in achieving competitive advantage. It drives a strategy for knowledge management that is aligned with the enterprise’s business initiatives. Every enterprise should have such strategies.

1. Develop a knowledge strategy — a clear concise articulation of the role of knowledge in achieving the enterprise’s mission, goals, and competitive advantage. Every enterprise should use such a strategy to align knowledge management strategy and the enterprise’s business initiatives.
2. Develop a knowledge management strategy that balances the dialectic of stability and change. The knowledge management strategy will identify e-knowledge capabilities that must be achieved to deliver on the enterprise’s knowledge strategy. These 10 action items are all part of a knowledge management strategy. This strategy must simultaneously operate in the current value proposition and prepare for dramatically different value propositions in the future.
3. Integrate knowledge-based initiatives into enterprise business plans; plan for impending reinvention of best practices. To succeed, knowledge initiatives must be an explicit part of the enterprise’s business plans, not stand-alone initiatives. Current approaches in e-learning and knowledge management should be scrutinized and compared to emerging best practices in other settings.

Exemplary Resources:
Knowledge Strategy

• AHIMA Case Study.
  www.transformingeknowledge.info

	3.
	Pilot Projects

Support a wide variety of knowledge management and community of practice pilots throughout the enterprise. Support different expeditions and multiple trajectories
in parallel to determine what works.

Each enterprise should establish a single, integrated, applications infrastructure for sharing knowledge and this should be an enterprise priority. However, there are many different approaches to creating and sharing knowledge. An assortment of distinctive communities of practice and communities of inquiry can yield valuable insights.

An enterprise must understand its knowledge ecology and reflect on what makes communities of practice effective under different circumstances. Storytelling can be used in dissecting and understanding the dynamics of knowledge and communities of practice.

Exemplary Resources: Support a Variety of Knowledge Management and Community of Practice Pilots

• UNESCO Education For All — Grassroots Stories.
  www.unesco.org/education/efa/ know_sharing/grassroots_stories/

	4.
	Environmental Scan

Scan the environment for examples
of changing best practices, business models, and strategies regarding e-knowledge; collect competitive intelligence on market leaders and innovators from outside the industry. Benchmark e-knowledge practices.

Organizations need to become active and reflective environmental scanners regarding e-knowledge. This should include identifying and evaluating changes in best practice, business models, and strategies for e-knowledge. For most industries, these efforts should take a global perspective in understanding potential challenges from unfamiliar innovators. Standard practice of benchmarking performance against familiar market leaders will prove inadequate during periods of disruptive change when the rules are being rewritten by new competitors as described in Chapter 6.

How can an organization know it is succeeding in raising its knowledge sharing capacity and competencies, and gaining ground against competitors? One of the best instruments is to use the enterprise knowledge strategy to focus on how knowledge contributes to competitive advantage, creating indispensable relationships and/or experiences. Benchmark your enterprise’s ability to create indispensable relationship and experiences for members, learners, customers, suppliers, and/or other stakeholders.

Exemplary Resources: Environmental Scanning for Best Practices, Business Models, and Strategies

• UNESCO Education For All — Grassroots Stories.
  www.unesco.org/education/efa/ know_sharing/grassroots_stories/
• American Productivity and Quality Center. www.apqc.org