Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process
Communications on the In-Q-Tel Knowledge Technology Investments
3/31/2004
6:33 PM
A note was sent on this morning to friends and family, but with bcc to at least one contact in most of the companies that In-Q-Tel has invested in: These companies are working on a new type of sense-making and knowledge propagation software and deployment models. They are:
Agent Logic Inc, Attensity Inc, Convera Inc, Intelliseek Inc, Language Weaver Inc, Kofax (Mohomine) Inc, MetaCarta Inc, NovoDynamics Inc, Stratify Inc, Tacit Knowledge Systems Inc, and Traction Software Inc.
For the purpose of the current private analysis of these companies and an evaluation of their technology’s I will refer to these as the
In-Q-Tel Invested Knowledge Technology companies (II-KT companies)
I
will address Attensity Inc and Inxight Inc, in separate analysis. The note sent
on this morning to friends and family was:
Dave and Nan
Five beads develop the
concept of a virtual museum existing within a Safe Net environment and having
push pull knowledge technology governing store front presentations.
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/virtualMuseums/home.htm
The Investment
Template seeks $22,500 to make the next step.
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/virtualMuseums/five.htm
This Investment
Template is good up to the point when my wife and I actually sign a contract to
sell our home to pay for the next six months of operating expenses. We will at that point loose the ability to
perform the tasks indicated in the Investment Template. We are trying to avoid this.
Please make a
consideration of this offer, while understanding the temporal aspect to the
offer.
Paul S. Prueitt
703-981-2676
One of several similar responses from the II-KT
companies was:
Hi Paul --
Sounds like you are
looking for investment in this project. We are not in a position to make such
investments, so that's a pass.
Good luck,
J
Actually, the investment of $22,500 is small. Due to my father being well known as a Taos artist, it has always been planned that the conceptual trending technology would be applied in the way proposed by these new beads. I would have preferred to do some additional work on the underlying technology for data structure measurement, since my father is a bit eccentric and I wanted to make it easier for him and his many collectors to see what we are looking at.
In any case, I sent this note to individuals in the II-KT companies so these individuals might understand where II-KT technology can be applied in a new type of anticipatory e-commerce. Several in my group have been watching B-2-B and B-2-C technology and methodology for over a decade.
There are two issues:
1)
Do
the II-KT companies actually understand the emerging market
2) Are the underlying technical capabilities insufficient to address the real emerging markets
The value proposition from technology identified by OntologyStream to the In-Q-Tel investment portfolio is clear, and can be validated if a conference of scholars were convened. No one has questioned this proposition. So far the response is that no one has the time to make the evaluation or to address the issues that are raised.
The investment offer remains in place as a test of the industry, and of In-Q-Tel. As we move forward into the next few months, the nature of this test will become more evident.
An objective evaluation of the II-KT technologies must be made. Two of the questions need to be answered:
1)
Is
there any interest in any of the II-KT corporations to see fundamental
innovations, beyond what they have productized?
2) Is the marketing language over-selling what the technology/methodology could deliver given broad understanding about the social/psychological natures of knowledge creation and sharing? In other words, if cultural barriers were also not a problem, would the technology work as advertised?
For example, what is that the potential role of blog analysis (as in the Traction Inc business model) in the context of an emerging e-commerce that uses branding philosophies and aligns these branding philosophies with real time thematic analysis of social discourse (as in the Intelliseek Inc business model). The Virtual Art Museum Investment is exactly THAT type of market. Why, then would Traction Inc or Intelliseek NOT be interested in this small investment? This is less that 1/5 the cost of a company’s participation in a single trade show.
The larger issue is with regard to an objective measure of actual knowledge capture by those companies that have been invested in by In-Q-Tel.
My colleagues and I am working on a paper on this. But we need some resources to keep our work moving forward at the best pace possible. The investment, or a small contract to do such a study, would be a reasonable expenditure if there was really a strong interest in getting the new II-KT technology and business models right.
Would it not seem that a senior person, with many new ideas about knowledge representational encoding and the social / psychological aspects of these new knowledge technologies, would be allowed to make some participation in the new industry?
How does one make an objective study of the problems and issues related to "capturing knowledge in process" or any one of the other marketing phrases used by the II-KT companies.
Today, I had a long phone discussion with one of the CEOs, and his thoughts and analysis needs to be captured without identifying the individual or company. I greatly admire the core innovations of the specific company, and have said so in various reports over the past 5 years.
Individual information is not what is needed to create general systems analysis for anticipatory web services as envisioned in this small investment.
Objective research by natural scientists MUST be developed.
The core issue will be the degree to which the pull of the market and the push of the eleven II-KT companies is resulting in a type of deep break-through.
How does the II-KT technologies compare to the data capture and encoding mechanisms and tools like those available from Acappella Software Inc, ReadWare Inc, Text Analysis International Corporation Inc, and OntologyStream Inc - which were evaluated by In-Q-Tel but not subject to investment.
How does one make the argument that the consequences of In-Q-Tel investment have NOT been less than what might have been achieved.