dcawrey - On one of my first newspaper jobs, my editor would call me over to sit next to him while he edited my stories. It was a great way to learn how to write. Google Docs allows that kind of collaboration over geographic distances. 

Not only has the hermetic thinker been replaced with agile groups, but so too work itself has been fractionalized into a hundred task types.   Whereas it was hide in your office and produce something great, I now liken even technological work to "grab an oar and row".  And yes, those tools are making it happen.  In an agile environment, you do as much as you can, when you can.   There is no completion.  The work is always there from the get go, to be looked at, tested, re-evaluated.   The project manager is no longer a composer, setting up his Gantt chart bars like musical notes on a staff.  He basically buys a bunch of Legos, throws them on the floor next to the cubigals and cubiguys and says..have at it kids!

I think that's why the best (fill-in-the-blank ... book, movie, painting, ad...) always surprises us on some level or generates an emotional response. Analytics can help us define an audience; they can tell us what they want (better service, faster downloads, more choices, green not yellow...), but imparting the message that your company provides this, or telling a story or painting a picture requires creativity that you can't get (yet at least!) from a program.

I have my sources, Mitch! :)

It's a great expansion of a popular creative writing exercise, whereby classmates - or friends or colleagues or people spread across the Internet - contribute a sentence, a graf, a chapter, or whatever to an ongoing piece of work. It can be a fascinating project to see where people take the tale. I've also seen people share their work in a Google Circle, opening it up for edits or comments from others. Some comments carry more insight and weight than others, of course, but it's a great way to get feedback (you may need a thicker skin!), especially if you're not in a class or getting any feedback the traditional way. 

As a writer, I find that frightening. The thought of using software to 'write' a 'surprise ending' appalls me... although I have read plenty of books and seen plenty of movies that are formulaic and could, theoretically, have been written by a computer!

Ithink that's the same inference the Editor drew from the Holme's report. It might not be as you rightly noted that these tools increase creativity but rather cn be a means to stimulate our creativity and brings it to the fore. I may be tempted to callthese techonology tools that aids of our creativity as Creativity Enhancing Tools.

Good point. Collaborative writing tools are really interesting in terms of sparking creativity and productivity. I use tools like Google Docs all the time, and I wish Wikipedia's interface was as easy to use. Maybe someday Wikipedia will introduce a really nice wiki editor that doesn't require knowledge of so much wiki jargon...