Virtual Communities Of Practices (VCoPs) for Ensuring Innovation at Universities -Firat University Sample

Abstract

Problem Statement: In our era, to generate innovative and strategic knowledge and use it to produce new products and services bears the utmost importance in terms of providing improvement, innovation, and thus competitiveness for organizations. Higher education institutions are considered prominent organizations leading the change for innovation by producing new knowledge and new know how(s). However, universities generally fall short in meeting these expectations and are very slow in generating new knowledge. Meanwhile, ever-evolving information and communication technologies (ICT) offer various opportunities in terms of knowledge utilization and the knowledge generation field. In this context, virtual communities of practices (VCoPs) have drawn attention due to their collaborative knowledge producing potential, which fosters organizational learning and improvement.