Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge

CHAPTER eight

Measuring and Managing Value Creation

MCKINSEY & COMPANY HAS BENEFITED FROM active and influential communities of practice for about as long as anyone—going back to the early 1980s, before the terms “knowledge economy” or “learning organization” became buzzwords. The firm began by launching several “practice centers” in areas where its leaders were convinced they were reinventing the wheel or missing opportunities to combine expertise across the growing number of globally dispersed offices. Since then, these “practices” (over thirty of them now) have been recognized by the firm’s leaders, members, and clients as pillars of the firm’s value proposition. Practices are self-governing groups of practitioners who dedicate part of their ...