Barack Obama may or may not get elected to the position of CEO of the United States in November, but he is showing other CEOs how to use Web 2.0 to drive innovation and buy-in.

Obama, who has a LinkedIn profile, used the Questions feature on LinkedIn to ask for suggestions on rebuilding the country's infrastructure. Last time I checked, he'd received over 2,500 answers.

If that seems like a small number compared with the thousands of unsolicited e-mails that politicians of every stripe receive every week from constituents and special interest groups, think again.

For one thing, Obama is controlling the conversation by asking for input on a particular problem. He has defined the parameters of what he's looking for.

For another, people answering the questions are part of a defined, filtered group. It is a self-selecting group, for sure, but it is nonetheless a more controlled group than you might ordinarily think of when you hear the word "social network."

Finally, and most importantly in my opinion, the people answering the questions are not only not anonymous, but their names are displayed prominently next to their answers.

In other words, they have strong incentives to provide thoughtful and intelligent-sounding answers.

Moreover, these are professionals taking time to answer a question that has no direct bearing on their immediate standing or compensation. Experts have questioned whether busy, knowledgeable people would take the time to contribute to wikis and other similar tools.

Nicholas Carr's comments in 2006 about more traditional knowledge management tools noted:

Using them turns out to be more trouble than it's worth--particularly for those employees who have the most valuable knowledge--and the platforms and repositories fall into disuse and are eventually, and quietly, dismantled. People go back to using efficient, direct conversations--through meetings, or phone calls, or e-mails, or instant messages--to exchange useful knowledge.

Clearly, as this LinkedIn example shows, Enterprise 2.0 is being adopted in droves. The issue isn't so much "Will people use it," but rather, "Will their inputs be useful?"

Thus it's no small thing to note that the answers Obama received are of tremendous quality. For instance, one director of marketing wrote (I'm excerpting only a portion of this answer!):

Industrial Strategy: Increasingly, most high-tech devices, including ones that were invented here (night-vision, storage playback, etc) are not made, researched, or designed in America anymore. As more and more production naturally moved overseas to find the lowest cost manufacturer, the iterative cycle of development soon followed and much of the R&D began to follow overseas as well. In order to continue to thrive as a nation, these well-paying, and high-value engineering jobs must have a natural home in America. To do this, as a nation we must be thinking about which strategic industries and areas that we wish to have their epicenter here, and invest accordingly. China, South Korea, etc have over the last 20+ years done this with excellence. We must think long-term, and think about the "linkages" between R&D and manufacturing. Alternative energy is obviously what most nations are gravitating towards as they think of this question today.

Obama is using a tool that any leader can use to solicit input from a group of people who perceive that answering is in their interests--even though there is no direct or immediate pecuniary interest.

What they do get is the benefit of feeling involved and of participating in a project that may produce significant long-term benefits.

I've written before about Obama's use of modern technology to advance his candidacy. He's not cutting-edge for a normal person, but he is the opposite of George H. Bush, who famously expressed astonishment at the existence of supermarket scanners in 1991, in the run-up to his failed reelection bid.

If Obama wins in November, I think it won't be as much for his policies as for the image he projects of being in touch with the modern tools and technologies that affect the lives of most Americans.

Business leaders can't afford to project any less to their employees and customers.