Inspirations from E2.0
I had the great privilege to attend Enterprise 2.0 this week in Boston with our friends from New Paradigm, now part of the nGenera Innovation Network. Perhaps it was the intellectual energy of Cambridge or the diversity and enthusiasm of the notable attendees...but something was "in the air" here that stimulated some great discussions, both on stage and off.

In the spirit of this confluence of social networks, collaboration, technological progress, new business models...I would like to offer some thoughts that came to my head...


1. Analytics and search. Think about web search...the form that comes back from a search expression is a list of links or an equivalent list of images. Rather primitive, don't you think? What if searches were "smart" - ie they had a point of view on how the returned information should be expressed.


My inspiration for this comes from an amazing Mathematica demonstration from Theo Gray, the front end designer at Wolfram Research. He built a periodic table of the elements where each entry is the top image from a search of that element name.



This is a great example of search results cast in a smarter, more contextualized form.


2. A simulation as a member of a social network. We think of a social network as comprised of human members. But how do we interact with those members? We ask them questions and we have information pushed our way. Hmmmm...can't an analytical model do the same thing? Why not go to the Facebook of my favorite model, post a question, such as ..."what is the current forecast for sales in Q4" and let it come at me with an answer? Why not let it receive my posted inputs and that of my colleagues (ex. "I think customers are enthusiastic about the new SuperWidget"). Intelligent but non-human actors on a social network could strengthen the collaboration that already exists.

3. Teaching the Net Generation on their terms. Lots of industries suffer from a demographic bubble - a large percentage of the workforce is within a few years of retirement, and with it goes all of that valuable experience and knowledge. The Net Generation is now entering the workforce and in some cases taking on key leadership positions. How do we make this work? I have suggested for a long time that the process of simulation is ideal for capturing and codifying human knowledge about a given system. The rigor and discipline that model development brings vets theories of the business from the participants in a comprehensive way. But until now I hadn't closed the loop on where this information goes...to the Net Generation! And how does this cohort learn? Through simulation...this is a very natural and comfortable medium for them. So perhaps simulation is an efficient way to transfer all of that great wisdom while allowing the Net Generation to find its own way?

George E. Danner
- posted by Industrial Science @ 7:28 PM