A detailed chapter from a book-in-progress recounting Julian Orr's ethnographic study of Xerox copier repair technicians in the 1980s-90s. Orr discovered that technicians' real expertise was social — shared through 'war stories' at breakfast and over radios — not captured in the official service manuals. The chapter traces how this insight led to the Eureka project, a peer-driven knowledge database that reduced service costs by 5-10% and eventually reached all 25,000 Xerox technicians worldwide, despite years of corporate resistance. It explores the tension between bottom-up practitioner knowledge and top-down managerial control, the concept of 'communities of practice,' and argues that Xerox ultimately failed to fully leverage its technicians as a strategic asset before the company's decline.
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