It's such an interesting phenomenon. What you're suggesting there is the new kind of horizontal links between individuals.
Now, rather than me as a creator imagining a contribution or particular project as a stand-alone, increasingly we see a collective effort at some level and see how we're moving ahead not by relying on one brain but by trying to piece together and connect the input of many brains—a collective wisdom, which is what the wiki phenomenon is really tapping into.
On the side of creativity, on the side of innovation, and so on, a lot of businesses—and certainly we at our research council—are increasingly not seeing the great experts in how the organization should move forward as being the president and vice-president; rather, now we're looking to the entire organization, as well as partners elsewhere.
This is a profound change. For two or three centuries we developed the notion of the expert who was going to get great ideas and then feed them out into the world. Similarly, on the economy the idea was to build the great product, and then your key would be to get great advertising to convince people to buy it. Now there's what we call the customer-driven marketplace, where the folks are not experts in a corner trying to decide what society needs, but are out there attentively listening to what today's preferences are, how people using this tool, and so on—actively engaged, such that the consumers, the customers, are now driving, in an unprecedented way. The issue is no longer using advertising to convince people as much as trying to pick up on what those preferences are and how you can meet them.
So it's such a different dynamic. That's why they talk about the flat hierarchical structures now, which really want to call into play the talent, the potential, the insights and perspectives, this diversity idea in which you're pooling from as big a bassin as you can.