Communities of Practice
Community, Economic Creativity, and Organization

'Communities of practice', like 'social capital' and 'networks', is an idea that has been widely adopted in the social sciences, particularly in discussion of innovation and creativity. This book evaluates the concept and its uses, and will be an essential guide for students and researchers.

It has long been an interest of researchers in economics, sociology, organization studies, and economic geography to understand how firms innovate. Most recently, this interest has begun to examine the micro-processes of work and organization that sustain social creativity, emphasizing the learning and knowing through action when social actors and technologies come together in 'communities of practice'; everyday interactions of common purpose and mutual obligation. These communities are said to spark both incremental and radical innovation. In the book, leading international scholars critically examine the concept of communities of practice and its applications in different spatial, organizational, and creative settings. Chapters examine the development of the concept, the link between situated practice and different types of creative outcome, the interface between spatial and relational proximity, and the organizational demands of learning and knowing through communities of practice. More widely, the chapters examine the compatibility between markets, knowledge capitalism, and community; seemingly in conflict with each other, but discursively not.Exploring the frontiers of current understanding of situated knowing and learning, this book is for all those interested in the economic sociology of organizational creativity and knowledge capitalism in general.

Prologue Community of Practice Then and Now
1. The Resurgence of Community in Economic Thought and Practice
PART I: COMMUNITY, CREATIVITY AND ECONOMY
2. Community and Economics
3. "The Art of Knowing": Social and Tacit Dimensions of Knowledge and the Limits of the Community of Practice
4. Re-animating the Place of Thought: Transformations of Spatial and Temporal Description in the Twenty-first Century
PART II: BRIDGING COGNITIVE DISTANCE
5. Cognitive Distance in and Between CoP's and Firms: Where do exploitation and exploration Take Place, and How are They Connected?
6. Project Work as a Locus of Learning: The Journey Through Practice
7. Breakthrough Innovation and the Shaping of New Markets: The Role of Communities of Practice
PART III: ACHIEVING RELATIONAL PROXIMITY
8. Buzz without Being There? Communities of Practice in Context
9. Knowledge Intensive Firms, Communities and Creative Cities
10. Open, But How Much? Growth, Conflict and Institutional Evolution in Open Source Communities
Epilogue Situated Learning and Changing Practice