A knowledge system includes one or more repositories with information for one or more topics, problems, and solutions to problems. A method to gather information for a virtual community of experts to address a problem area includes identifying the problem area, and searching for a virtual community within a master knowledge repository that is relevant to the problem area. The master knowledge repository includes information for one or more virtual communities. If the relevant virtual community is not found, the method includes creating information for the virtual community that is relevant to the problem area by associating information for one or more experts of the problem area to the virtual community, and creating a profile for each of the experts based on the associated information.