Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams have been doing significant work in applying cooperation theory to business practice. Their article "Realizing The Power Of Innovation Webs:Traditional enterprises give way to new models where innovation is collaborative, distributed, and open" introduces the notion of "Ideagoras" and other important ideas, based on their own extensive research:

In ancient Greece, agoras were public commercial centers where citizens assembled to debate and barter. Modern-day agoras such as eBay enable buyers and sellers to freely negotiate and assign value to goods.

Ideagoras, on the other hand, are open markets for innovation. Early-stage ideagoras are springing up in many industries, presenting an unprecedented opportunity to harness innovation outside the enterprise. Consider, for example, the increasingly active trade in technology components and IP rights. Companies used to seek patents to protect their physical products. Today, growing numbers recognize that new and potentially lucrative revenue streams can flow from IP as intangible as E=mc2.