I am an avid follower and sharer of your blogs, Harold. This piece is so foundational to the difference between those companies and organizations who "get it" and those who do not (and as you well state -- will be "left behind!"). I hate to get philosophical, but it bears mentioning that this is basically an epistomological issue. Modernity with its need to design systems of truth (the purvue of experts and academicians) cannot admit that "regular people" have anything to offer (they just mess up the systems which they are too unlearned to understand!). In post-post modernity, where we are all seekers of truth and we are not troubled with the need to defend our truth systems, we all can be learners; and both collaboration and cooperative become not only possible, but natural and celebrated.