I worked with AuthorBee, to explore interest in their idea around a kind of collaborative authoring platform. I created an assessment of the competitive landscape, recruited users for a focus group to define features and test a prototype, created specs and wires, and managed MVP product development with an offshore dev team. I was somewhat skeptical but sometimes the most valuable thing a consultant can do is show that an idea isn’t worth pursuing. We created a prototype, that was a bit like choose your own adventure, and I recruited several fan fiction writers to give us feedback. We did find that with some RPG games there is the kind of collaboration where people take turns writing but most cases collaboration really means offering feedback and reviews. Let’s just say it was very revealing and the startup is now, with some success, doing some twitter based collaborative authoring.