Communities of Practice: Performance and Evolution
  We present a detailed model of collaboration in communities of practice and we examine its dynamical consequences for the group as a whole. We establish the existence of a novel mechanism that allows the community to naturally adapt to growth, specialization, or changes in the environment without the need for central controls. This mechanism relies on the appearance of a dynamical instability that initates an exploration of novel interactions, eventually leading to higher performance for the community as a whole. 
Bernardo A. Huberman, and Tad Hogg (Dynamics of Computation, Xerox   Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA. 94304)