Communities of Practice
Kaizen’s Communities of Practice (COP) are peer-to-peer assistance networks that combine in-person activities and events with Kaizen’s online portal and innovative partnerships. They are a powerful means to extend the breadth, depth, and impact of donor assistance to development’s end-clients.
Kaizen’s COPs are an innovative development approach. They are based on the belief that local professional peers, in any area, have extensive insights, knowledge, and expertise to offer one another, that local service providers are the best able to adapt international best practices to local cultures and contexts, and that advances in information technology – both capabilities and access – provide unprecedented opportunities for local reformers to improve their lives, organizations, and societies.
Kaizen’s COPs create sustainable peer-to-peer assistance networks that combine in-person activities with an interactive online web portal and innovative partnerships. Kaizen adapts our existing web portal for each country and community area.
Kaizen uses various names for our COP approach, depending on the development objectives and targeted end-clients they support. For example, Professional Communities (PDF) (PCs) support SMEs, general management, and cross-cutting areas such as women in business. Sector Support Networks (PDF) (SSNs) support businesses in a specific value chain or cluster. Knowledge Centers support the intersection of government, higher-education, and business. Kaizen is actively seeking opportunities to apply the COP approach to other development priority areas such as health, natural resource management, and entrepreneurship, and are investing in ways to commercialize COPs so that they are fully scalable and sustainable fully through market forces and without requiring donor assistance.
The following graphic distinguishes Kaizen’s COP approach from traditional development approaches:
