It's not just "the web" anymore; companies and consumers are coming together in a new kind of collaboration that is radically reshaping the digital business landscape. Emerging forms of social computing are revolutionizing the way we interact, socialize, and consume – and redefining the business of product innovation. When Google acquired the mobile social networking service Dodgeball earlier this year, it took a significant step toward its goals first defined nearly a decade ago: to "organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the web."¹ Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had a meeting of the minds back in 1996 that would foreshadow the many emerging forms of social computing, like Dodgeball, flooding the airwaves and networks today. The great success stories of our time, like Google's, will feature companies that leverage grassroots systems of organization, classification, and even recommendation to shape digital product form, function, and identity.

The magnitude of this transformation hit me during dinner on a recent Saturday night as nearly a dozen Dodgeball text messages alerted me to the close proximity of my "friends" – other Dodgeball users I'd added to a list online. This type of user participation in digital products – Google ranks each search result based on the number of links pointing to it, while Dodgeball becomes a city guide when users like myself rely on their roaming "friends" to point them toward hot spots and cool events – carries with it democratic values that establish a new breed of trust between a company and its consumers. Those companies that foster trust by engaging the participation of their consumers will lead industry innovation, shape the digital marketplace, and meet with resounding, even groundbreaking, success.

Consumers have long altered the physical form of their products in superficial ways – from stickers on notebooks to spraypaint on skateboards. Today, users dress-up, change-out, and strap-on components of their digital tools and toys in the same way they choose clothes and hairstyles. Companies are encouraging new forms of self-expression through their product offerings, establishing a deeper sense of trust with the consumer, and in turn spurring innovation and expanding their brands. Nike allows its customers to participate in the design of their sneakers through an elaborate website; everything from Swoosh color to the graphic on the tongue is configurable. This type of customization, a current trend in product design, enables elaborate self-expression. It also encourages a closer personal identification with products and trusts the user to participate in defining the product form, function, and identity. That trust, in the case of Nike, has given way to greater product dynamism and strengthened the company-consumer connection. The company is now better able to stay at the cutting edge of athletic shoe and apparel design, prominent in the minds of consumers, and at the center of hip sporting culture.