Good luck with this. There certainly is room for something light & inspiring.

I would like to see a tool that would, first, allow real-time editing of structured documents. Think Etherpad meets Wufoo.

Take the example of a team writing an RFP to buy IT equipment. Team members from purchasing, the business unit and IT would need to collaborate on a document with likely a pre-defined structure (technical specs, functional specs, terms & conditions, deadlines, etc). This is different from the lack of structure in Google Wave or Etherpad. I imagine that the majority of knowledge work in today's enterprise is about filling in templates rather than free-flowing text.

For this to work, as a minimum we would need:-

1. real-time communication 2. the ability to design templates with the right balance between strictness & flexibility

Second, it should support a workflow. Sticking with this example, the purchasing manager should be able to publish the RFP and invite vendors to respond. The bid manager at the vendors should then be able to turn (transform) an RFP into a bid template, invite his/her sales team to collaborate on a bid and so on.

Not sure how this would work, but perhaps the following:-

1. Access control 2. A way to transforming one document with a certain structure to another.