The other day I found myself perusing the New York Times like I’m apt to do anytime I need a few minutes to de-focus and relax. The third most emailed article of the day, “If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone,” caught my eye. “Hmm,” I think to myself. “That sounds collaborative. I’ll check it out.” Low and behold, the article is about InnoCentive, an innovation intermediary that brings together external experts to solve companies’ R&D problems.

Innocentive, founded in 2001, has grown nearly 30 percent since September of last year from 115,000 members to 145,000. Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams talk about InnoCentive in the Ideagoras chapter of Wikinomics, so it’s no surprise that it’s making waves. What interests me, though, is that this article was the third most emailed article of the day. And just to clarify, it’s the overall most popular, not the just science section. Imagine all of those people reading about ideagoras! Maybe I just get a little too excited to see Wikinomics in the mainstream media, and maybe I’m forgetting who reads the New York Times. But wikinomics is infectious, and I clearly have the bug.

More interestingly though, according to the NYT article, is that the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Sen. John McCain, has “proposed that the government offer $300 million to whoever invents a battery compact enough, powerful enough and cheap enough to replace fossil fuels.” Maybe he’s a little technologically-challenged, but at least it seems he’s ready to collaborate. If the government embraces McCain’s proposal, perhaps we will see a solution sought on yet2.com or Innocentive. Perhaps even you can be a part of that solution.