Ideas.com

"You can feel like a lone wolf out there," says Abdou Touray, himself a guru in Net dynamics. "When you're working on a problem, you can get emotional about it. It almost takes on a personality of its own, and you think, 'I have to conquer this.' But you know there are people backing you up, and that gives you a tremendous amount of confidence. Your problem becomes their problem."

Of course, for the 911 system to work, people have to be willing to ask for help -- which means that they have to admit to colleagues that they don't know something. "You do have to get over that hump," says Mike Huntziker, 38, the company's New England - practice manager. "My attitude is, I'll tell you what I don't know. Then I'll search IAN for the answer."

Some questions are more urgent than others, of course, so users designate levels of priority. "Immediate" suggests a response time of one hour or less; "urgent" suggests a four-hour response time; "routine" questions should get answered in one business day; and "not time-sensitive" questions should get answered within one week. Durham monitors response traffic and makes sure that important questions don't languish. "I believe that if a question is out there, we should make a good effort at answering it," she says.

Smart Jerks Are Still Jerks

Dror Liwer sits at a conference-room table in the heart of Wall Street, chin in hand, brow deeply furrowed. No, he's not agonizing over the company's latest e-commerce project. He's studying photographs taken during a recent office trip -- whitewater rafting, along with a night of bowling -- and he's trying to pick his favorite shot. "This one's great," he says. It's a group shot taken at the bowling alley, and it shows techies, project managers, and business analysts all sandwiched together, looking like a bunch of students on spring break. There's even a class clown wagging his tongue at the camera.

"He's one of our most senior people," Liwer chuckles.

It's hard to compete on ideas without technology that can store, track, and distribute what a company knows. But computers don't have ideas -- people do. That's why it's impossible to compete on ideas without a group of people who are serious about creativity and who are committed to sharing what they know. In the new world of business, if you want to compete aggressively, you have to collaborate generously. That's why Context recruits according to what it calls the swan profile: It wants to hire people who are "Smart, hard-Working, Ambitious, and Nice." Most organizations embrace the first three criteria. But it's the fourth criterion that distinguishes the culture of Context from that of most companies. "I came from a Big Six firm where the one thing that all of the consultants had in common was arrogance," says Khan. "I was very attracted to the idea of swan, but I thought it was just marketing." It's not. Says Liwer: "We absolutely disqualify people if they're not a culture fit. People say, 'Are you nuts? He's got a Harvard MBA!' I don't care. If someone muddies the waters or creates an atmosphere of negativity, I'd rather not have that person around."

How do you know a nice person when you see one? Kahn offers a few of the values and attributes that he seeks out: Nice people don't just look out for themselves. They don't try to act like the smartest person in the room. They are team players. By sharing what they know, by brainstorming, and by recruiting other swans, they help keep IAN vibrant, and they fuel an overall culture of ideas. "Everybody here checks his ego at the door," Kahn says. "We have four PhDs from Ivy League schools on a project team right now, and you can't tell which ones they are."

Niceness alone is not enough. Context explicitly rewards people for sharing what they know, and it has developed ways to track which people deserve the biggest rewards. Every six weeks, for example, as part of a companywide conference call, CEO Stephen Sharp, 41, singles out the leading contributors to IAN. He receives nominations from Durham, who uses metrics that tell her who's using the network and how: She awards 1 point for asking IAN a question, for helping to answer a question, or for updating a "Colleagues" record. She awards 5 points for adding an artifact to the knowledge base. A consultant who racks up 15 or more points over a six-week period is named an IAN Good Citizen. A consultant who earns fewer than 5 points -- usually a new hire -- will hear about it.

Today, Context is working hard to cope with its growth and success. It invested heavily in knowledge management early in the game. Now it must focus on maintaining the swan culture it has built. But ultimately, for Context to continue to prosper, IAN must continue to evolve. "For every good idea that we capture, I wonder how many others we miss," says Ward.