How do you decide when to build an internal community of practice versus encouraging your team to engage with an external one?

When to consider an Internal CoP ...

-Deep knowledge sharing: Your team has unique expertise that can be leveraged internally.

-Strong team culture: You want to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing within your team.

-Competitive advantage: Protecting proprietary information is crucial.

- Limited external options: Relevant external CoPs are not available or meet your needs.

When to consider an External CoP ...

-Access to industry best practices: You want to learn from external experts and stay updated on industry trends.

-Diverse perspectives: Your team needs exposure to different approaches and ideas.

-Networking opportunities: You want to build relationships with external stakeholders.

In some cases, a hybrid approach might be optimal. You could create an internal CoP while also encouraging participation in relevant external communities. This allows for knowledge sharing both internally and externally.

Its a very interesting topic of discussion. In my experience, I have always started with external vendors initially to start the initiative so that we can learn from the best talent and see the value if the initiative. Once we scale to a critical mass, we start to hire internally. Even though we have internal teams for most of our programs, we still engage with the external teams for review, auditing and learn new strategies.