From Intellectual Stimulation (an article in Intelligent KM)

CoPs are more about pursuing a passionate interest and making friends than doing business. Therefore, they're a source of genuine meaning for their members — they possess a powerful, positive emotional component born of personal relationships. The personal aspect makes CoPs more manageable and collaboration within them more intimate and direct than traditional methods, such as meetings and workgroups.

Communities of Practice provide a way for people to share knowledge and to continuously recreate and expand that knowledge. Communities of Practice are also process, not product oriented. Their focus is not on 'what we're going to do with this' but on 'what can we learn about this.'

The corporate mandate to eliminate unproductive time from work processes helps companies execute more efficiently. Execution is the overriding instinct of most corporations — often superceding innovation. The mandate to execute often crushes creativity, which can be at odds with fiscal quarter objectives — even though innovative thinking is perfectly consistent with the overall corporate mission of being, for instance, the best network router manufacturer in the industry.

Promoting Communities of Practice within an organization can provide a way to increase employee motivation, broaden learning and application, expand creativity and cross-network in new ways.