Bernardo A. Huberman and Tad Hogg
Dynamics of Computation Group
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Palo Alto, CA 94304
hogg@parc.xerox.com
@ARTICLE{
AUTHOR = "Bernardo A. Huberman and Tad Hogg",
TITLE = "Communities of Practice: Performance and Evolution",
JOURNAL="Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory",
VOLUME="1",
PAGES="73-92",
YEAR = 1995
}
We present a detailed model of collaboration in communities of practice
and we examine its dynamical consequences for the group as a whole. We
establish the existence of a novel mechanism that allows the community
to naturally adapt to growth, specialization, or changes in the
environment without the need for central controls. This mechanism relies
on the appearance of a dynamical instability that initates an
exploration of novel interactions, eventually leading to higher
performance for the community as a whole.
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