This report is intended as a guide for selecting and assembling a technological platform to support communities of practice across a large organization. To this end, the report addresses four questions:

1. What makes communities of practice different from garden-variety online communities?

Every group that shares interest on a website is called a community today, but communities of practice are a specific kind of community. They are focused on a domain of knowledge and over time accumulate expertise in this domain. They develop their shared practice by interacting around problems, solutions, and insights, and building a common store of knowledge.

2. What categories of community-oriented products exist and what are they trying to accomplish?

The ideal system at the right price does not exist yet, though a few come really close. But there are eight neighboring categories of products that have something to contribute and include good candidates to start with. Analyzing these categories of products yields not only a scan of products, but also a way of understanding the various aspects of a knowledge strategy based on communities of practice.

3. What are the characteristics of communities of practice that lend themselves to support by technology?

Technology platform are often described in terms of features, but in order to really evaluate candidates for a technology platform, it is useful to start with the success factors of communities of practice that can be affected by technology. The third section of this report provides a table of thirteen such factors with examples of how a technology platform can affect the success of a community in each area.

4. How to use the answer to these questions to develop a strategy for building a platform for communities of practice?

Most of the product categories can be a starting point for building a general platform. In fact, this analysis of the field suggests a strategy for approach the task. Decide what kinds of activities are most important for your communities. Select a product in that area, and expand it with elements from the other categories.