This method helps you build a community around a shared goal (like inclusive innovation) to learn, collaborate, and grow skills together.

A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who:

• have something that they do in common
• come together to share and develop their knowledge and skills

Communities of practice are often professional (for example a design community of practice), but don’t have to be.

When you are running an inclusive innovation project, you and the local people you are working with can form a community of practice around the subject you are working on.

Elements of a community of practice

3 elements of a community of practice

Anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger coined the term community of practice. They said that a community of practice has 3 elements that distinguishes it from just a group of friends or colleagues:

• Domain – a shared topic or area everyone is interested in
• Community – regular discussions, meetings and other activities
• Practice – working together to develop their own and each other’s skills

How to start a community of practice

1. Choose and define your area of expertise (your domain), so that people can decide whether to join
2. Set your goals. What do you want to achieve? How will you know if it’s going well?
3. Get members to introduce themselves, so that everybody knows what skills and experiences others bring to the group
4. Select community leaders or moderators – the people who will organise things and keep the community on track
5. Choose how you will communicate and meet (for example which online platform you will use)
6. Give newcomers and beginners useful resources, to help get them up to speed
7. Track how things are going and iterate on how your community works

Further source reading

The steps above are a very short summary of an article from Thunkific by Colin Burton:

How to Build a Community of Practice (with Examples)