Author: Etienne Wenger
am an independent thinker, researcher, consultant, author, and speaker. I am mostly known for my work on communities of practice, though I consider myself a social learning theorist more generally.
Theoretically, my work focuses on social learning systems.
I am trying to understand the connection between knowledge, community, learning, and identity. The basic idea is that human knowing is fundamentally a social act. This simple observation has profound implications for the way we think of and attempt to support learning.
Practically, these ideas are helping people who face all sorts of challenges, such as:
design more effective knowledge-oriented organizations
create learning systems across organizations
improve education and lifelong learning
rethink the role of professional associations
design a world in which people can reach their full potential
I have been making a living helping people and organizations apply these ideas. I do consulting, workshops, and public speaking. I also work in collaboration with a number of special partners.
Now I am hoping to focus on broader issues with a new project called "Learning for a small planet."
Publications
Co-authors
Productive Colleagues
Publications
Snyder, William M., Wenger, Etienne (2003). Communities of Practice in Government: The Case for Sponsorship. http://www.ewenger.com/pub/index.htm
Snyder, William M., Wenger, Etienne, Briggs, Xavier de Sousa (2003): Communities of Practice in Government: Leveraging Knowledge for Performance. In The Public Manager, 32 (4) pp. 17-22. https://www.publicmanager.org
Wenger, Etienne, Snyder, William M. (2000): Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier. In Harvard Business Review, 0 (0) pp. 139-145.