"Start anywhere; follow where it leads." These words from Myron Kellner-Rogers became a touchstone for us. We started with the names of about 40 people, people who had a depth of experience working with groups and a demonstrated passion for nurturing spaces of collective insight, co-creation and action.

Over the course of ten months our list multiplied tenfold, to well over 400 people recommended by their peers as sources of deep experience and expertise. We used a short survey and a "sociometric" exercise to invite people to describe themselves, their work and some of their networks of relationships. To date, we have profiled more than 100 people, interviewed 61, and have transcribed and studied over half of these interviews. This data is what informs the book and this website.

As the data began to emerge, we first felt only the daunting tasks of trying to describe the indescribable, and of somehow organizing a very large and complex array of information. We were trying to render visible a phenomenon with subtle and intangible qualities, qualities most often discerned tacitly, indirectly. Connection. Relationship. Coherence. Wholeness. Wisdom. Emergence. Healing. Flow. Transformation. How can we really, concretely, describe such things?

As we immersed ourselves in the data, however, we were reassured by the words of George Washington Carver: "If you love it enough, anything will talk with you." As we listened to transcript after transcript, story after story, more and more descriptions of lived-experiences, we began to hear and then see archetypal forms, expressive visual images, resonant quotes, signs, symbols and repeatable patterns. As we invited people to describe themselves and the nature of their work, we began to hear a deeper harmonic...

The book, Centered On the Edge, describes what came out of that exploration, and the Collective Wisdom Initiative web site illustrates new developments that were inspired by Centered On the Edge.