Companies are keen to follow the trail blazed by Internet sites like Facebook and Wikipedia, where hierarchy and protectionism have been pushed aside as the sites' owners hand over power to their customers, drafting in users to create innovations on the product.
Western Europe's employees are also better wired: every new member-state is below the western average for internet penetration, and all but Estonia and Slovenia trail on e-government scores.
The Tahoe Rim Trail Association has online bulletins about trail conditions, kept up-to-date by hiker reports, so a few minutes on the Internet would have informed me that we were in for up to 5ft of snow as the trail ascended above 8, 000ft.