Communities of Practice.

I’m trying to get out of the habit of  using wikipedia for definitions so I went deeper and surprisingly found a site that broke the term down a little bit more where I could understand.   http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm.  The definition was A group of people who share an interest or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better.  To me this sounds similar to the definition for PLE. ( how you can learn from each other).  Also I  read how huge corporations would keep ideas and concepts under wraps because of the fear and competition.  As anyone would.  If I came across a new idea for something that I thought was big I would be reluctant to share my ideas with someone who may try to duplicate it.  But what they found out is sharing their ideas and concept did  the opposite of what they thought.  They collaborated with other corporations they got new ideas and found out how to make ideas better and stronger.  They grew from it.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communities_of_practicehttp://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/404/lesser.html