Developing centres of expertise in a consulting firm

I hope someone can assist in tackling the following:

I have been put in place of driving the development of Centres of Expertise
(CoE's) at a mid-sized consulting firm, for which I work.
Ten centres were identified, of which, after a few months of work (only the
last two under my direction), one center is nearing competion, another two
have made progress and the others are far behind, some not even past the
start line.

We defined a working (successful) CoE as:
A common approach decided upon

Current Service Offerings agreed and well defined

Marketing materials developed

Training materials/programs in place

CoE meets regularly to

Update members

Explore new service offerings

Debate application of knowledge to other projects, clients or industries

After analyzing the possible reasons, I came up with the following:

Symptons: CoE effort seems to be fizzling out

CoE leaders meetings are repeatedly not being attended.

Some CoEs have not taken off the ground.

Others seem to be stuck in the same phase for well over a month.

No CoE has yet reached the finish line, with only one possible 'winner' this
year.

New CoEs have been added but their development state is unclear.

Possible underlying problems

Some question the need for a CoE at all, or may prefer other mechanisms.

It may not be clear how CoEs can contribute to consultant work, or even
bringing in new work, and so commitment is lacking.

Some may think they can avoid the work entailed, without Director-level
involvement.

Work load is perhaps increasing to levels which prevent any effort being
given to CoE development.

Billable vs. non-billable time debate has not been resolved, while requests
for CoE time to be billable have been unreasonable.

Is there any literature that can assist me in revitalizing this initiative?
I am sure these problem are not unique.

Regards,

Saar Ben-Attar