Hack:
Unleash learning - give diversity a voice!

There's a fantastic example of this in practice here on the MIX. Check out the story of Rite-Solution's internal market for ideas. It's so well developed (and they keep expanding upon it), that the market itself has become the "heat map" of the organization--everyone can see where the action is, anyone can offer up an idea (even if its outside his/her realm of "expertise"), and its how folks emerge as real contributors in the organization. It's actually become the main tool of new employee orientation at the company: on your first day, you're given a log-in to the ideas market, so you can explore, get pulled into the spirit of it, see how you might make your own mark on the organization.

An observation: it seems like an effective approach is to think of "knowledge sharing" in terms of creative expression--when people are switched on by their ability to contribute to the conversation, they tend to share what they know (and better yet, what they imagine). I've seen this in the context of organizations that use flexible media like blogs and microblogging for sharing ideas and building a conversation in the company. Another point of reference is the IBM knowledge/values jam.

We have the technology, but too often we do not use it to its potential. The reasons are mostly motivational. Either the environment does not truly value a diversity of voices, or participants fear the consequences of sharing their thoughts openly due to expectations of unfair treatment. Either way, it's a trust issue. In the first instance, people may fear that their contributions will be wasted; in the second, that they will be abused.

I am proposing The Trust Extender hack that is intended to help people overcome both of these obstacles by providing a method for diagnosing and designing conditions for trust. It can be as useful for enabling knowledge sharing via collaboration technologies as change management has been for enabling new business process implementations.

I believe McKinsey had implemented something of this nature inside of their organization. Something to think about: it's not enough to have a platform; you also have to create a culture that embraces idea sharing and is change oriented.

Yes but also remember that the best ideas are withheld as you want to build on them and not allow others to steal those, so while this will get some out in the open people are generally cautious about giving out information and share ideas that they feel could be hijacked and not get them enough credit for it.

But this could be a good tool to direct communication in certain areas and build that conversation space that would have the potential to substantially impact the culture in the organisation.

Actually interesting, companies invest in people but not in seeding the knowledge on the organization! this can also be a excellent way to find future stars.