Knowledge Networks: Innovation Through Communities of Practice Review
Knowledge Networks by Paul M. Hildreth and Chris Kimble shows how communities of practice create, share, and sustain know-how. It treats innovation as a social process: people solve problems together, exchange stories, and build trust that moves tacit knowledge.
Overview
The book links knowledge management theory to practice via case studies. It covers communities of practice structure, roles, and lifecycles; boundary objects and brokers; and the interplay of tacit and explicit knowledge across teams and organizations.
Summary
Key concepts: legitimate peripheral participation for onboarding, narratives for transferring context, and boundary spanning to connect silos. The authors show how light governance, shared artifacts, and supportive tools let communities evolve. Metrics focus on capability growth, reuse, and problem-solving speed rather than raw content volume.
Authors
Hildreth and Kimble are researchers and practitioners in knowledge management. They balance academic grounding with operational guidance drawn from organizations in industry and the public sector.
Key Themes
Communities as engines of tacit knowledge. Trust and identity as infrastructure. Boundary objects that travel across contexts. Technology as an enabler, not the core. Value measured by learning, reuse, and reduced time to competence.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths: clear synthesis of theory, practical governance patterns, and instructive cases. Weaknesses: fewer quantitative evaluations and limited advice on modern remote-first platforms. Pair with current tooling guides for implementation.
Target Audience
KM leads, engineering managers, HR and L&D, product and research teams building learning cultures, and consultants designing knowledge programs.
Favorite Ideas
Community stewardship as a role. Knowledge brokers at boundaries. Storytelling as a vehicle for tacit know-how. Lightweight charters and rituals that sustain participation.
Takeaways
If you want innovation, grow communities. Give them a purpose, a steward, shared artifacts, and time. Measure capability and reuse, not document counts. Tools support the network, but people and practice create the knowledge.
