Center of excellence

The Auburn Performing Arts Center, Julie and Hal Moore Center for Excellence at the Auburn High School (Alabama) is focused on performing arts.

A center of excellence refers to a team, a shared facility or an entity that provides leadership, evangelization, best practices, research, support and/or training for a focus area. The focus area in this case might be a technology (e.g. Java), a business concept (e.g. BPM), a skill (e.g. negotiation) or a broad area of study (e.g. women's health). A center of excellence may also be aimed at revitalizing stalled initiatives.[1]

Within an organization, a center of excellence may refer to a group of people, a department or a shared facility. It may also be known as a competency center or a capability center. The term may also refer to a network of institutions collaborating with each other to pursue excellence in a particular area.[2] (e.g. the Rochester Area Colleges Center for Excellence in Math and Science).

In technology companies, the center of excellence concept is often associated with new software tools, technologies or associated business concepts such as Service-oriented architecture or business intelligence.[3][4] In academic institutions, a center of excellence often refers to a team with a clear focus on a particular area of research; such a center may bring together faculty members from different disciplines and provide shared facilities.[5]

In the healthcare sector, the term often refers to a center that provides sufficient and easily accessible medical services to patients.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Mark O. George (2010). The lean six sigma guide to doing more with less. John Wiley and Sons. p. 261. ISBN 978-0-470-53957-6.
  2. ↑ Tarek M. Khalil; L. A. Lefebvre; Robert McSpadden Mason (13 August 2001). Management of technology: the key to prosperity in the third millennium : selected papers from the ninth International Conference on Management of Technology. Emerald Group Publishing. pp. 164–. ISBN 978-0-08-043997-6. Retrieved 13 February 2012.
  3. ↑ Eric A. Marks (2008). Service-oriented architecture governance for the services driven enterprise. John Wiley & Sons. p. 271. ISBN 978-0-470-17125-7.
  4. ↑ James A. Obrien. Management Information Systems (Special Indian Edition ed.). McGraw-Hill Education (India). p. 315. ISBN 978-0-07-062003-2.
  5. ↑ National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on Materials Science and Engineering: Forging Stronger Links to Users (2000). Materials science and engineering: forging stronger links to users. National Academies Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-309-06826-0.
  6. ↑ Farmer, Paul. 2001. The Major Infectious Diseases in the World -- To Treat or Not to Treat? N Engl J Med 345 (3): 209

See also