The second development is that the Internet has created the unprecedented capacity for mass collaboration.

FORBES: Connect

This allowed anyone to build their own windowfarm and then contribute to improving the design as part of a mass collaboration.

FORBES: Windowfarms R&D-I-Y: Lessons for Crowdsourcing Innovation & Incentivizing Engagement

That's led some utopians, like Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, authors of the book "Wikinomics, " to predict the rise of "mass collaboration" as the new form of economic organization.

WSJ: The End of Management

Moderated by Don Tapscott, author of Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, among other books, panelists were unanimous in their belief that the ubiquity of the Internet, along with the emergence of Web-based platforms that enable mass collaboration and crowd-sourcing, hold the key to rapid creation and development of new startups.

FORBES: How To Start Up U.S. Job Growth: Nurture Startups

One consumer website in particular has already cracked the problem of building easy-to-use collaboration tools with mass appeal.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

In a review updated earlier this month, Natural Standard Research Collaboration, a Cambridge, Mass.

WSJ: Can a Root Get to the Problem of Insomnia?

As for whether it works for sharpening the brain or minimizing damage from a stroke "the jury is out, " says Catherine Ulbricht, co-founder of Natural Standard Research Collaboration, a Cambridge, Mass.

WSJ: An Energy Shot for the Brain