From Knowledge Transfer to Knowledge Exchange and Beyond: the Story of a Community of Inquiry

This paper has documented the establishment of a Community of Practice of BusinessImprovement Professionals meeting in Business Schools within a particular region. It discusses theoretical ideas relating to the nature and activities of communities of practice.The potential to develop a community for engaged scholarship. The paper considers difficulties suggested by some authorities in pursuit of collaborative research between academics and practitioners, and looks at the idea of a community of inquiry as a means to support collaboration in co!creating, capturing and disseminating new knowledge, using a rigorous and dynamic data gathering protocol.