There are a lot of web 2.0 offerings out there -- many of them enable some form of social networking. Many provide specific help for some customer relationship management. These are good things. But if you look at business as a whole, there has not been a revolution to move us toward working together online. (This has happened much more in the music and shopping arenas, and in sites like Facebook and Linkedin.) We rate things and build communities around favourite bands or products, but our customers share their thoughts about us a lot more than we share our thoughts about what we are or ought to be doing.

The organizational world needs more interaction. People work in remote relationships much of the time; large organizations need to gather opinion from diverse elements -- in order to get closer-to-the-customer information and in order to generate innovation. They also need to make sure that there is sufficient connection and exchange of thought so that there is alignment of purpose and understanding of critical issues. One U.S. motto, e pluribus unum, means 'out of many, one.' That is, from our diversity may we make a single entity, or take unified stance.

 In order to generate this strength as teams evolve into dispersed geographical webs, we need to have mechanisms for channeling the flow of ideas and the direction of effort in such a way that the many contribute to and understand the one. This is why it is necessary to connect the different parts of the organization or team in a way that encourages ongoing, neural exchange of critical ideas. I'm thinking of both formal structures like online meetings or task lists, and of informal gradually-developed work areas for sharing emerging issues.

At GroupMind, we think of interaction as participating in building a larger intelligence. Every little piece adds more shape to an emerging whole, that only becomes clear through the swarm of various bits of information and viewpoint, sticking together so that the group can make sense of it.