This is the reason why my two ventures, frogpond and BMID, exist: Via this post from Headshift I followed up these referenced videos of the latest NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) event: Collaborate to Innovate: the rise of social networks.

[...] creativity as a function of a situation and not of the individual. Nevertheless, it needs individuals that read across networks and transfer ideas from on context into another. He also thinks that organisations need to manage and teach the risk of productive ‘accidents’ by introducing variation into groups, divisions, departments and teams and encouraging learning from each other. By following this, I’m wondering to what extend social software tools, such as blogs and wikis, help to reveal the level of diversity within a group and/or encourage diverse behaviour within a network. (Headshift)

Well, sure, on the one hand social software in the enterprise can help with the discovery of unconscious or hidden patterns (of relations, interests …) … e.g. by supporting social network analysis. But to me it’s main advantage is the facilitation of relations and joint undertakings – basically leveraging the distributed creativity and know-how in the organization, and thus enabling the emergence of new patterns (of work, ideas, etc. – you get the idea).