The whole system cannot be designed, but rather nurtured and grown like a living organism. This dynamic quality contrasts sharply with designed solutions such as instruction or EPSS systems. Dynamic networks can be messy, redundant, poorly organized, and idiosyncratic. On the other hand, their amorphous nature allows greater adaptability and responsiveness to problems that inevitably arise. Practitioners serve as co-designers .
Networks depend on community members for their content and much of their structure.
Workers themselves become sources of expertise and knowledge about solving problems. The success of the network depends in large measure on a sense of ownership that practitioners feel toward the system. If a network knowledge system is seen as an instrument of control by management, it can never achieve its potential. Only when workers routinely use and contribute to the system can a network system mature. People need to get in the habit, as they address a work problem, of leaving a record of how they solve it.