Participatory Economics: The Supply + Demand of Participation

I'm on the tail end of my week in London and I was able to sit down with colleges Stefan Stern and Robin Hamman where we had a brief but rich discussion on the idea of being a social business (podcast here). We discussed quite a few things from emerging start up models to communications in a social age, but one of the things I brought up was the mainstreaming of participatory economics. My theory is that social technologies and the online behaviors they enable leads to more participation from what use to be static audiences and "consumers". But as a result of this, a demand is generated for participation to be reciprocated from business and brands. If this is true (and I think the needle is moving in that direction) does big business have the supply to meet the demand of participation?