The Bumble Bee is a site I stumbled across a couple of years ago and it became a permanent fixture in my RSS reader. Prior to the Collaborative Technologies Conference in Boston (now called Enterprise 2.0) two summers ago, the site author, Ken Thompson, sent me an email and we connected at the conference.

The guy is a delight with an engaging presentation style and his ongoing analysis of teaming and collaboration — with biomimcry as his guide — was the catalyst for his thought leading blog and the impetus for the development of his Web messaging applications (unbeknownst to me until I met him, Ken is an accomplished software architect, team lead and business leader) which include SwarmTeams for businesses and SwarmTribes for consumers.

Ken has written a book called “The Networked Enterprise, Competing for the Future Through Virtual Enterprise Networks” which I found incredibly enlightening. When Ken sent me the manuscript and I wrapped my head around his approach, I realized its importance as enterprise organizations embrace “2.0″ and map their businesses, organizations and cultures on to our increasingly networked world.

My ongoing reading of Ken’s blog, the nature of his swarming software for messaging, and the fact that he’s an incredibly smart and all around good guy has compelled me to try to find a way to get him on your radar screen. If you’re involved in enterprise or organizational level teaming, communications or are trying to understand what it means to be a virtual enterprise in a networked world, turn to Ken and absorb what he’s delivering.

After the jump, a very short paper from Ken Thompson on small firms, big firms and regional economies as an introduction to him and his thoughts.

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