Strong threads of learning-knowledge transfer within communities of practice

A crucial success factor for all organizations is the ability to expand the capabilities of its people. The challenges facing today\´s business reality of global teams working within virtual spaces are putting into place processes that support developing core competencies through learning. This calls for a dynamic, nurturing, and knowledge-based environment. The Communities of Practice (CoPs) structure provides exactly this kind of environment, enabling learning, decision-making, core competency growth and development. Our organization is benefiting from "strong threads of learning" by utilizing the CoP structure to enable development of our business processes. The enterprise Product Information Management Solution (ePIMS) program, a corporate initiative within Motorola, benefits from the development of learning transfer of core competencies within the Communities of Practice (CoPs) environment. ePIMS is working to provide simple, common, global and fast processes to manage development and manufacturing product data across five of its six business sectors. ePIMS provides an enterprise business solution that is collaborative and builds commonality through the business sectors. The decision to use Communities of Practice in the ePIMS program arose from the business need to deploy a cross-sector common solution. The collaborative and consensus-building nature within communities of practice provides a perfect solution for obtaining cross-sector consensus. CoPs bring a diverse, virtual group of people together with a common purpose to create, share, and leverage knowledge and experiences. The intrinsic nature of an ePIMS community of practice is that it promotes knowledge sharing while maintaining a focus on delivering business results.