What's an Organization man to do? He has learned from five years of nastiness that big companies with Renoirs on the top floor are neither trustworthy nor very satisfying places to work. And dotcom startups were a kick, but they turned out to be not the most relevant or stable joints in the world.

So there he is, back in the corporate office park--employed, at least, and yet unable to see employment in the same old way. He has experienced the possibilities of meritocracy, of hatching an idea and growing it. Perhaps next time, with a real business plan, a startup could work out: He would get help from others with the same vision; information and decision making would be shared, as would the rewards. It would be a business by and for the people!

It might look like the striking, imperfect, evolving creation of Rob May, who has spent months fleshing out his vision of distributed work with a company (sort of) called the Business Experiment (TBE). It's a virtual incubator that both allows and requires stakeholders--anyone with interest and an Internet connection--to help conceive a venture idea, self-organize, and run the business. It's utopian and also, in concept, pretty profound.

The spark was James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds (Doubleday, 2004), which explores the possibilities of group intelligence in making decisions. May wondered: If he created the right conditions, could a crowd start a viable company? He launched TBE in July, announcing the plan on his popular blog, Business Pundit, and soliciting feedback. The response was mixed. "A lot of people were supportive," May says. "Some said the idea was ridiculous; a few said, 'Hope you have a good lawyer.' "

Using open-source software, May built a Web site to act as a virtual boardroom where individuals can register, vote on ideas, review updates, and engage in discussions. He created a compensation system that awards equity points for submitting winning ideas, voting, and assisting with business planning. The profits from every project would be split, with at least 60% to the crowd, based on each person's point total.

In just over a month, nearly 900 stakeholders had whittled down 60 proposals to half a dozen, including a capital-intensive MP3 retail kiosk business and a social-networking site for business travelers. The winner: an online service named, not coincidentally, the Wisdom of Us, scheduled to launch in early 2006, which would give small-business customers access to multiple consultants' advice. "I don't even like the idea we voted on," May confesses. Still, "I want to see if the experiment will work."

TBE is an example of "commons-based peer production," a nonhierarchical, fully transparent form of work usually referred to as peer to peer, or P2P. It's not a new concept--open-source software development has been out there for 15 years, with the Linux operating system its most celebrated success. But typically, P2P projects are "staffed" with uncompensated people who have more passion for the idea than for any resulting profit. And "since cooperative production for the market can fail and lose money, it's a serious proposition," says Michel Bauwens, a former information analyst with the U.S. Information Agency, who now writes extensively on the evolution of P2P.