Rod Boothby works for one of the 'big four' consultancies. But, more interesting than that, he authors a blog called Innovation Creators. It's aimed at people like you. People who have deep organisational responsibilities, yet need to keep themselves attuned to new opportunities for improving the business processes for which they are responsible.

Horror stories keep appearing about trouble-making bloggers or contributors to public wikis who have no sense of responsibility. The Los Angeles Times asked its readers to contribute to an editorial on Iraq. So, not surprisingly, they did. And it had to be closed.

Our very own David Milliband is evidently not one to learn from others' mistakes. (He's a government minister, if you're not from around these parts.) He set up a wiki page to evolve some kind of environmental contract with the populace. Unfortunately for him, some of the populace saw this as an opportunity to have a lot of fun at his expense. The page is closed while defra decides what to do next.

But such irresponsibility is unlikely to be repeated inside an organisation. Some management and IT are very uneasy. It's not surprising, when their only exposure has been the silly stuff. But staff would have to log in as themselves, so the potential for mischief-making is close to zero.

The benefits in organisational knowledge retention and effective communication, collaboration and cooperation are huge. I strongly recommend that you head over Rod Boothby's blog to learn from his real-life experiences.

And if your staff are uneasy about editing blogs and wikis, tell them they can do it by email.