Check out Aaron's post on collaborative networks: "This [Collaborative Networks] is very different from social networks or social software, which is focused entirely on enabling conversations. Collaborative Networks are focused on groups accessing and organizing data into actionable formats that enable decision making, collaboration and reuse. Collaborative Networks will increasingly be critically important to business and organizations by helping to establish a culture of innovation and by delivering operational excellence."

His post lays the groundwork for understanding why MindTouch's space is so important.

All of you know I've long been a proponent of creating social networks which have real value (fuunk.com an example of this) - collaborative networks is taking this notion to the enterprises. It's not enough to throw in some social software into your company and mimic Facebook - it's about creating real value with measurable returns by empowering all your employees with information that'll allow them to execute tactically.

This leads me to a tangent that's been bouncing around in my mind - I haven't given it much thought, so it's a bit rough. The basic premise of the argument is that the economic growth in the States over the last decade has largely been by making industries more efficient. The Industrial Revolution, the economic rise of America all were possible because they allowed more value to be extracted from capital.The dotcom boom of the late '90s was sold on the notion that an information network would allow even more productivity to be squeezed from workers. Increasing productivity build value. This is how economies grow - it's not by shuffling money around into complex financial instruments that Wall Street created out of thing air - there's no value in that.

The economic bubble that's been burst recently was the simple revaluation of assets which should have never valued that high. The notion that a country or an economy can add more value through complex financial instruments is pretty much shot to hell.

If we're to grow the economy and recover from this recession, companies have to get leaner, while still being able to product as much (or more) than before. How best to do this than by taking advantage of technology?

Past generations had the problem of not having enough information - to go out and find information was difficult and time consuming. We have the reverse problem - so much information that learning how to parse and execute on that information is becoming far more valuable than being a gatekeeper of information. Having access to all the relevant information that's strewn across all your legacy systems and humanizing that data to help make decisions makes companies more productive.

This is what's most interesting for me, working at MindTouch. We are working on a collaborative network that allows companies to empower their employees with more decision making by making more information available at a tactical level. This is about providing REAL value with data. As much as I love social networks (you know, seeing as to how I run one), my personal experience is that their value is too soft.