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Recommended Reading
Smart Business: How Knowledge Communities Can Revolutionize Your Business
by Jim Botkin
Free Press, June, 1999
ISBN 0-684-85024-9Jim Botkin, internationally recognized author, consultant, and president/founder of the International Corporate Learning Association, has written another superb, practical, and inspiring book. Not just for business people, it is equally valuable for school principals, superintendents, heads of other educational organizations, and teachers. Of all places to apply information on how to build successful knowledge communities, educational systems are undoubtedly the most important.
Built around the metaphor of the beehive, the book offers insights, information, and practical guidance based on Botkin's extensive international experiences. Smart Business includes lessons learned by InterCLASS Fortune 500 companies as they explore how to build effective knowledge communities that:
- create safe places to learn
- view failures as learning opportunities
- value diversity
- are hard on ideas and soft on people
- promote consensus and are participatory
They value innovative learning as "the process of organizing groups of people to act together in new, possibly unprecedented situations." Botkin notes that such innovative learning is characterized by cooperation, dialogue, empathy and open communication. Rather than using adaptive thinking, which simply perpetuates the status quo, knowledge communities use anticipatory thinking which prepares for the future. Lots of suggestions on how to do this!
The book offers a vivid picture of the world that now challenges us--and will soon be challenging our students as adults.
Copyright © April 1999 New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org
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