Many of us have missed our colleague and friend, Bob Butler, of TimeMatters co-founding fame. After departing LexisNexis (hey, how long could a visionary like Bob have lasted in a corporate hierarchy – longer than I had predicted actually), Bob seemed to disappear. But thankfully, one of my very favorite big thinkers is back with a fascinating venture called BestThinking.com.  There’s a quote from Bob currently in the “favorite quotes” section of the main web page that says, “Today’s unprecedented challenges call for new thinking from a broader base of thinkers.”

So what does that mean? Here’s my take on it, which I was just pleasantly surprised to see is also one of today’s “favorite quotes”: “I’m fascinated by the concept of “LinkedIn meets Wikipedia meets Google Scholar.” I really that describes the idea – it’s a collaborative online think tank, different than Wikipedia in its orientation by “thinker” instead of purely by subject. While Wikipedia is a superb substitute for traditional encyclopedias, online or paper, BestThinking is different. Experts on any subject can register as “Thinkers.” The BestThinking people then evaluate and check out the credentials self-submitted by potential Thinkers. I actually was questioned on several of the items I listed as my own credentials when I applied – impressive. So instead of just getting info by subject, one can get info by their expert-of-choice.

While free now, my bet is this could become a subscription service at some point . . . or perhaps Bob, in his endless financial wily-ness will build up an impressive base of content and subscribers and then sell out . . . imagine Google Scholars morphing into Google BestThinkers at some point? Perhaps. In the meantime, I’m a big fan of Bob’s and imagine this will make it big, especially in an economy where those who have the most/best information will likely be those who manage to turn bad times into opportunistically exploited successes.

So now that I’m a “Thinker” at BestThinking.com, I better get my tail in gear and get some of those thoughts posted! Bob, it’s great to have you back – and best of luck with this fascinating new knowledgebase venture.

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