Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media at Disney-ABC Television Group, explains how a wiki is the hub for his digital media department:

His team didn’t ask permission to create the internal Web site, with staff profiles and a section called “Cool Stuff We’ve Done This Year.” They just did it. And truth be told, Cheng is rather proud of that. The project captures what his 20-month-old incarnation of the digital-media department is all about. Speed. Collaboration. Gumption. “I see us as a Silicon Valley startup within a big company,” he says.

The business benefit of the wiki shows in the creation of that “Cool Stuff We’ve Done This Year” section, because people can start by informally listing things they’ve done, then go back and add descriptions, links, images, and video as they are produced, and pretty soon they have a comprehensive report on what they’ve accomplished.