I once accepted a job with an international company that focuses on learning and collaboration. My new CEO wanted me to get a sense of the corporate culture by meeting the heads of the various divisions face-to-face. So I took a trip around the world on a one-way ticket east that started and ended – sixteen days later – in the little town of Carmel, California. When my journey was over, one of the things I had collected was a huge stack of business cards from London, Paris, Johannesburg, Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland, and points in between. I had spoken with, and could reconnect to, more than a hundred people around the world. A new community of learners, which crossed national and organizational boundaries and cultures, was spread out in my hands. All I needed to do was enter their e-mail addresses into my address book and I could reach out to almost anyone, anywhere and anytime.

As I flipped through the business cards, I had one of those moments of insight that had me scrambling for paper and pen. It was not just this small community that was reflected in these cards but the whole world. What I wrote down was something like this: