Was going to explain the difference between Shared Interest CoPs and Task-oriented CoPs, but I though I’d start off with CoPs in general, see below:
Typically a Communities of Practice (CoP) is a group of people coming together to share and learn about a common interest. These are typically not driven by management, instead participation is voluntary, and there is no direct goal to achieve, other than learning.
The reason for CoPs is to build the capabilities of the members, the smarter and more aware people are the more capable and adaptable they become. What is learnt in a CoP can be applied to tasks.
This is augmented by the fact that people are perpetually learning off each other (as opposed to a one time hiring of external experts), and this distributed cognition enables a wisdom of crowds phenomenon where information evolves and new information is created.
In this respect we can say a CoP is an in-house university where you voluntarily have a passion for a topic, and where there are no teachers or agenda, only members sharing and conversing, people learning from each other.
