When put into a learning context, communities provide an environment for connecting people to other people’s stories and experiences, as well as mentoring, all of which result in better and faster learning and the sharing of tacit knowledge within an organization.

When creating collaborative learning communities, it is important to consider more than just the technology. The first step is to clarify the business objectives and how your strategy translates into group and individual competency requirements. From there, learning objectives may be defined that support competency gaps.

In summary learning communities can offer their members:

Learning and capacity development (empowering employees to take charge of their own learning and development)
Create opportunities for informal learning
Staff Interacting with experts
Exchange of knowledge and resources
Enabling the emergence of best practices

It is clear to me that more and more organizations will start building communities into their business startegies. Although choosing a good platform is important, what really is going to matter is strategy, service, support, and know-how.