Name: Bassal Mehmood Talha

Matriculation no: 75681

Case: MindTree: A Community of Communities

Q1: What are the key elements of mindtrees approach to knowledge management? How effective are
they?
Ans: The key elements of mindtrees approach to knowledge management focused largely upon human
interaction and relationships and communities of practice. At mindtree Communities of Practice was
an initiative which were a group of people who shared a common interest or concern and wanted to
learn how to do it better, members engaged in joint activities and discussions helping each other by
sharing information and building relationships that enable learning and developed a repertoire of
resources such as experiences, stories, and tools on order to enhance their capabilities. Mindtree
believed that KMs role is to help people perform their jobs better and develop themselves, and the key
elements were four things, enabling knowledge creation which leads to innovation; enabling the
environment which leads to knowledge sharing and collaborating; enabling processes, practices and
systems which helps build a knowledge culture; and enabling change and shifts in mind-set.
The company encouraged employees to self-organize and collaborate through communities of practice
which in essence was that creating output was not mandated but people were given the full liberty to
set their own goals, and individuals were motivated by the creative process and their interactions with
peers.
In addition to such approaches mindtree ensured a supportive environment for cultivating KM. The
people function as a part of its competency framework, had included KM as an organizational
competency. The performance management system gave people freedom for getting involved in
organization building activities that went beyond the job descriptions, such as communities of practice,
and the company set out to create a comprehensive knowledge ecosystem consisting of four reinforcing elements: social space (e.g communities, knowledge fairs, and tech festivals), mind space (e.g
tools for personal development and creative thinking), virtual space (e.g collaborative IT systems), and
physical space (e.g an inspiring building and workspace).
All of such approaches to KM has led mindtree reap many benefits, some which are an extensive data
repository where all resources and solutions to most complex problems are shared, and anyone facing
any problem from any department can take help from it or ask on the communities portal for help, a
friendly environment is created which makes them feel like a community therefore a reduced labour
turnover rate, encouraged, energized and motivated workforce and liberty to work the way they
(employees) want resulting in efficiencies, knowledge sharing, idea sharing and overall profits growth,
such are the approaches that led mindtree to win MAKE award in 2009 which is most admired
knowledge enterprise and also some other awards. Neuron is also a seed put into the organization

through the approach that mindtree had been following, an incredible portal where the entire life cycle
of an idea can be tracked, linked, commented, suggested and rated. Anyone can contribute to any topic
or start up a new topic, which also lead company to reduce its energy consumption by about 28% in 7
months through ideas shared on neuron.
Q2: How does mindtree create, develop, and sustain communities of practice? What role do they play
in the company?
Ans: To create communities of practice is fairly a simple process in mindtree; a group of people who
shared a common passion simply decided to get together for learning, knowledge sharing, business
development, or self-development. Champions were self-selected , anybody wanted to take on the role
and was passionate enough to reach out to others could volunteer. To avoid dependency on a single
person, however, all communities had to have multiple champions. Every potential champion had to
first attend a workshop with Datta in which he or she sought to weed out those who were not fully
committed. Community champions then determined the process by which others became part of the
community. Members collectively determined their communitys objectives and champions then drove
them towards those objectives.
To sustain the communities companys executive Datta had developed a maturity model through which
he created a vision for communities as they developed overtime and tried to achieve greater impact and
influence. There were 4 stages of the community maturity model
1. Community of interest: collection of individuals sharing an interest and talking about it. The
company, did not emphasize on such community because of its unpredictability
2. Competency building: with a much greater importance this community focused on building p2p
relationships through face to face meetings and its focus was on to developing collective objects
and developing individual human capital
3. Capability building: These communities has direct impact on companys processes and it
focused on building relationships between communities and other organizational entities. It also
focused on organizational development and building structural capital such as content,
methodology, and systems
4. Capacity building: Finally at the highest level of maturity this community focused on building
relationships between communities and the outside world, also focused on environmental
scanning and building a sense and respond mechanism
When the champion of a community felt that he had delivered he would let the other person who is
capable of it take his position. Also when a community was at the point of maturity, and was a question
of fading away, the champion decided to take a diverse route and put the community on another
project or community to sustain. All of these measures helped mindtree to sustain the communities and
extract their usefulness in the company.
Communities play an important role in the company as they allow workers to bond with each other and
retains the workforce, motivational levels increase and companys benefits from different ideas and
solutions that are given on such communities. Different projects and problems were discussed on the

communities with a purpose and it would result in great solutions and ideas. This would help the
company to form a family like environment in the company and an employee is given the full
opportunity to practice his ideas which later helps company on capitalizing on such ideas. One such
example is the energy preservation which was achieved through community involvement. The other is
5*50 initiative which was a strategic goal of the company which could have never been able to exist
without such communities.
Q3: How (if at all) does the 5*50 initiative alter the roles and responsibilities of the Knowledge
Management function? What Changes (if any) would you propose?
Ans: The 5*50 initiative may not alter the roles and responsibilities of KM function but it may increase
them. As the 5*50 initiative took place, mindtree already and now more progressively enhancing itself
to help and support the 5*50 initiative as its success critically depended upon KM function. Some of the
ways it increased its roles and responsibilities were that it would help ideation process and provide
critical IT systems support through Neuron (the idea life cycle portal). Experts modified neuron so it
becomes harvesting and tracking mechanism for thousands of ideas. Neuron would also be linked to the
companys new enterprise content management system so that mindtrees partners such as customers,
academic institutes could work with employees to develop ideas. ECM will allow mindtree minds to
work together seamlessly with stakeholders, facilitating discussions, sharing and collaborating. The
innovation council which the KM function had setup was also expected to play an important role by
bringing together idea nurturers from every functional area to discuss and help develop the top few
ideas. The KM function will also provide essential data for mini-MBA program. Thus far KM had focused
on building culture of ideation and improving delivery process, now with 5*50 initiative it will start
facilitating direction. It will assist in business planning and take on a route to quantitative contribution as
well.
Proposals:

KM function should not only limit neuron to idea lifecycle tool or a ware house of ideas instead
they should increase its scope to provide leaders of ideas with prototype testing of such ideas in
real terms and people from inside and outside the company can comment or suggest ideas to
make things better.
Km function can make a slight tweak in the neuron that when the idea is shared on the neuron
all the relevant information and discussions relating to it, new and older both from inside and
outside sources can be linked to it so that the leader of the idea has extensive knowledge about
it and also can know whether such things already exists or not or are they similar and how are
they performing, and also can get practical help from internet sources from people who have
done such things earlier.