Right now, Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, has seventeen chapters. But chances are pretty good that, even before the paperback edition next year, there'll be an expanded version with an eighteenth chapter—one in which Friedman wants to include "the best ideas and proposals sent in from readers." Towards that end, he'll be posting periodic discussion starters on his website; this week, for example, he's asking: "What stories do you have about the difficulty of making Clean Energy work even when everyone agrees that it is in our best interests?"

There's a word for this sort of thing—"crowdsourcing"—,and Jeff Howe is the fellow who wrote the book on it, but a quick visit to his blog last night shows that, for now at least, Howe hasn't had anything to say about Friedman's plans...maybe when he gets back from his UK book tour?

(Yeah, the headline is a bit snarky; perhaps it would be more helpful to use the term in Friedman's press release: "open creative collaboration.")