It certainly is a great time to be in the research/social media space. As new platforms arise the challenge to use those platforms appropriately and develop new research methodologies will be pivotal.

You mentioned collaboration and co-creation being used in business re innovation. I believe that knowledge management was at the fore of this movement in the 1980s.
While KM focused solely on harnessing internal knowledge of organisations Research 2.0 and Social Media today harnesses knowledge external to organisations.

The communities that Matt develop today bare some resemblence in (idea not execution) to the CoP (communities of practice) that knowledge managers set up in the 1980s with the central idea being that the group comes together for a purpose around an idea, to build on knowledge or ‘crowdsource’.

I believe for some companies learning to work collaboratively internally (and understanding the value of internal crowdsourcing) has gradually opened them up culturally to more transparent and collaborative efforts externally.

The timing for Research 2.0 is right.
Cheers,