That's difficult to do when organizations don't know what they know. The connect strategy is the easiest to understand but the most difficult to implement. Using the Internet to connect employees with common interests into communities of practice is a powerful way to foster innovation and productivity. However, communities are organic in nature and social in operation. That approach may work for simply getting a procedural or definitive answer to a question, but fully functioning communities of practice should yield much more.
Communities are like clubs.
They need volunteers to make them work, and they need space and time to develop an identity and a vision they can embrace. Further, much facilitative work must be conducted in physical space before the community can thrive in a virtual one. Fostering innovation and improving productivity by leveraging the talent and capability of employees is not a new idea. However, those organizations that are merely throwing technology at the issue are missing the mark when it comes to developing communities of practice. Training won't be able to deliver on its performance-improvement promise to business executives until trainers have developed the capacity to leverage and apply all four of these strategies to foster a culture that enables learning.