1000 A.D. Medieval peasants create the first Communities of Practice, or guilds, to share knowledge and best practices within a profession (e.g. blacksmithing or weaving). 1986. Guerrilla Knowledge Management is rediscovered by a social anthropologist studying photocopier repair technicians at Xerox. He finds that the most productive conversations for the technicians are not with their customers, or their managers, but with each other over coffee breaks or at the warehouse. The repair technicians sit down together, tell stories, and fill the margins of their photocopier manuals with best practices and lessons learned from each other. Xerox decides to cultivate these informal conversations, turning them into intentional communities of practice dedicated to sharing knowledge. They turn their repair technicians loose on a knowledge network, where their tips and best practices today are captured and smoothly shared with all 2,500 repair technicians, worldwide.
1990s. The Xerox experiment is replicated extensively in leading organizations - connecting isolated geophysicists on ocean drilling platforms at Shell, automotive engineers spread across factories at Chrysler, or isolated procurement clerks in the U.S. Navy. 2000. Tomoye introduces Simplify, the first commercial GuerrillaKM software.
