Competitors can help you win

A perhaps new business strategy surfaced at PTC's 20th Anniversary User event -- the idea that business competitors can help each other. One simple example: Josh Mings of SolidSmack, a well-known SolidWorks blog, was invited as a media blogger to the event!

John Abele, co-founder of Boson Scientific and event presenter, spoke on how we "live in exponential times" and that crowd-sourcing improves according to Metcalf's Law. It states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system.

Stay tuned for for the results of my interview with Mr. Abele, soon to come in Machine Design and Medical Design. Rarely have I met such an enthusiastic, kind, and interesting person. He had a great story to tell on using social networking tools to help find what happened to his father's submarine, the U.S.S. Grunion, which disappeared during World War 11.