Doing more with less: How a multicompany community of practice shares knowledge and saves money.

Imagine having a trusted network of your peers in other companies whose responses to your questions saved your company $500,000. Through that network, you could ask almost any professional question and have several responses within a few minutes, or, at most, hours. When you receive the responses, you are confident that they represent well-thought-through research, are probably working in the environments of your peers, and therefore have a good chance of working in your environment. This article is a case study of a fee-based, multicompany community of practice (CoP) for information technology (IT) directors based in the greater San Francisco, California, region. It describes the principles and practices that have led to the outcomes that resulted in the trusted network described above. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]