Diane Le Moult and Miguel Cornejo welcome you to the CoPs SIG!

The need for communities results from the characteristics of today's business world: globalisation, increasingly rapid transformation of the business environment, exponential development of available knowledge that ages rapidly, coupled with the continual growth of knowledge intensive business. Failure to exploit the obvious advantages of Communities of Practice would mean a step backward. Hence the challenge is to know how to manage them in the most efficient way. Within this SIG dedicated to CoP, we would like to invite you to a reflection on the following issues:

1. How to make a Cop fly? Launching, setting up and monitoring a CoP within a business environment: which process, which skills, which "back office" or enabling capabilities, which leadership, which moderation "hints", the CoPsmaster's job (toolkit, learning tools, certification program,..).
2. The "CoPs Practioner Corner": the best practices, failures and success, sharing of experimentation, benchmarking...(with, in the mean time, the creation of an European Who's Who in CoPs)
3. Value creation through CoPs and metrics to evaluate and to validate CoPs
4. Critical success factors for CoPs in an heterogeneous and multicultural environment

CoPs SIG Hot Links: - Direct access to CoPs SIG Discussion Forum - Overview of Theme 8 activities - Links to useful CoPs-related websites and resources

1. Critical success factors for CoPs in an heterogeneous and multicultural environment