William Snyder, Ph.D., is a co-founder of the Social Capital Group, a research-consulting group that helps civic organizations and businesses create community-based knowledge strategies to achieve social and economic outcomes.
Recent public-sector work includes research and consulting on several civic learning networks on topics such as healthy families, workforce development, and safe cities. Organization-level initiatives include fostering communities of practice at DaimlerChrysler to help the recently merged firm leverage global knowledge and at the Veterans Administration where communities of practice have been launched to build capabilities in areas such as customer service and team management. Dr. Snyder has nearly 20 years of experience working with Fortune 500 companies-including AT&T, American Express, and Colgate-Palmolive-in large-scale change efforts that involve changing strategies as well as complex social structures and technical systems to meet shifting market requirements. He applies this organization-transformation expertise in research and consulting initiatives that help private and public sector organizations understand on a practical level what it takes to build capabilities for improved performance.
Recent publications include Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier in the Harvard Business Review (with Etienne Wenger, Jan-Feb, 2000) and Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Practical Guide to Managing Knowledge (Harvard Business School Press, with Etienne Wenger and Richard McDermott, 2001).
Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge