Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge

CHAPTER nine

Community-Based Knowledge Initiatives

THE ATRIUM OF THE WORLD BANK IN WASHINGTON, D.C., is a vast and stately space of glass, steel, and concrete. The architectural grandeur befits a major financial institution—no sign anywhere of a knowledge initiative. But if you happen to visit on the day of a “knowledge fair,” you will see something quite different. Between pillars, you will find booths run by the Bank’s communities of practice. What these booths display are not financial spreadsheets, but information about the community’s knowledge of development issues and the projects they are pursuing: biodiversity, information systems in agriculture, gender in rural development, inequality and socioeconomic performance, and land policy and ...