In her work about the construction of communities of practice for innovation [Management Learning.2002; 33: 477-496], Jacky Swan from the Warwick Business School puts down in a couple of paragraphs why communities are places where incremental innovation can foster yet radical innovation cannot (because of the boundaries). In 2003 I wrote about the community ecosystem and the need for boundary spanners which describes a similar thesis. It's been nearly fifteen years since Brown and Duguid linked the idea of communities of practice and organizational learning and innovation.
These characteristics of spontaneity and freedom from organizational constraints lead authors to link communities of practice positively to learning, knowledge flows and innovation. Evidence in support focuses on the ways innovation emerges incrementally from local adaptations of work practices within communities, in response to new problems.
However, it has also been noted that, whilst communities of practice may encourage the flow of knowledge and innovation within communities, they may limit the knowledge flows across communities and, therefore, can place constraints on innovation at the wider organizational level In particular, radical innovations often occur at the interstices across established groups and work activities – they are radical precisely because they disrupt or fundamentally alter current work practices. Established communities of practice may, then, pose problems for the development of radical innovations that cross such communities.
So, encouraging communities of practice than cross organizational boundaries such as business units or the corporation itself, can augment the individual and organizational capabilities to radical innovation. There's a problem though. The knowledge that each of the groups (organizations) in the emergent community have is tied to social relationships of the people that have created and maintained it. Radical innovation and subsequently creation of new knowledge requires new social relationships between the groups (organizations). The 'negotiation of meaning and identity' (like in Wenger) in the emergent community is highly conflictual, especially with the lack of institutionalized roles. A power struggle between the groups that form the emergent community is consequence.
The development of the power struggle is dependent on the commonalities in ethics, values and beliefs that the groups (organizations have). Yet each of them have two important organizational tools to support them:
Strategy (the determination of the long term goals, including resources to execute a course of action). Those who can shape or give meaning to the strategy (for instance, innovation strategy) will have more power in the community;
Structure (the framework and design of the formal organization that supports the groups, including lines of communication). It provides the groups with two important resources: information and authority. Groups that can control either will have more power. Changes in the (adaptive) community can highly influence the distribution of this power though.
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