Since the time of cavemen, people talking in groups has seemed like a good way to develop new ways and strategies. With computer networking it seems "collective intelligence" will make the approach much more attractive, especially for today's immensely complex problems. There are Internet "Wikis," phone and video conferencing, and many variations of these.
The creative thinker should avoid being pushed into agreement with the consensus opinion, however, because such groups can rapidly evolve into political comfort zones. We see many examples of the prescient thinker vs the powerful group in climate change study groups.
