As the game spread into new countries and was adopted by different cultures, fresh ideas about how to maximize the collective talents of 11 players stationed across a soccer field were instrumental in transforming the sport and the way it was played.
The European Commission this week offered some ideas, from more intrusive and early collective monitoring of national budgets to an incentive system where profligacy is punished by withholding EU funds.
In perhaps the most important test of Mr Taylor's ideas, Uruguay is offering to swap much of its debt for new bonds containing collective-action clauses.
Engineers working for car companies and using networked computer-aided design terminals still file their ideas directly to the server for the chief designer to approve rather than bouncing them around among colleagues for collective improvement.