UNIVERSAL CUSTOMER BASED INFORMATION AND ONTOLOGY PLATFORM FOR BUSINESS INFORMATION AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

• US 20100082691A1
• Filed: 09/21/2009
• Published: 04/01/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/19/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Strategyn Holdings LLC
• Original Assignee: Strategyn Incorporated
• Inventors: Jaster, Mark, Ulwick, Anthony W.
• Granted Patent: US 8,494,894 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/792
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/367 Ontology
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data

Abstract

A system constructed using one or more of the techniques described includes a collective set of data structures, uniquely designed entities, information tools, and computational and machine methods useful to store, append, interact with, retrieve, process, and present data and information in a fashion that enables associations to be made between the entities and the particular Jobs and Outcomes that pertain to the underlying markets, or possible markets, of an enterprise which have been identified by separate analysis following an Outcome Driven Innovation (ODI) methodology.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

an outcome-driven innovation (ODI) data repository, embodied in a computer-readable storage medium, incorporating in data records a unifying jobs framework to facilitate description of an interaction a customer has with products and services;

a universal strategy and innovation management system (USIMS) server configured to;

measure the data records to provide direct quantitative measurement of customer demand based on customer ODI survey responses and related meta-data;

normalize numerical values associated with the data records by an indexing method to have identical market meaning regardless of factors being studied and scale in a manner that reflects the significance of the metric in market terms;

compare disparate variables of successful business endeavors directly to one another for prioritization by casting these onto an ODI based model of the market and performing the comparison with its quantitative information;

report on a uniform dimension of importance and satisfaction.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the direct quantitative measurement is both reproducible and repeatable.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein reporting tools and data visualizations associated with the report enables evaluation of a market position in absolute terms relative to markets and competitors, identification of new product opportunities and assessment of threats from changes affecting its markets, quantification of future economic value and uncertainty of development investments and communication of information to capital markets related to asset value of a subject marketing and product portfolio compared to others in chosen sectors.

4. A system comprising:

a search engine, coupled to an outcome-driven innovation (ODI) data repository in operation, including one or more communications protocols, wherein, in operation, the search engine searches through data records and other text based information in a format associated with the one or more communications protocols for data for tagging, finding new technology solutions or intellectual property, finding or broadening markets for products, concepts or opportunities, identifying subject matter experts, identifying competitors, and populating an outcome-driven innovation (ODI)-compatible data repository;

a segmentation engine, coupled to the ODI data repository in operation, including segmentation tools to interact with statistical analysis and modeling packages and import additional metadata tags into a job/outcome data schema in operation, wherein, in operation, the segmentation engine segments a market using the segmentation tools;

a metadata engine, coupled to the ODI data repository in operation, wherein, in operation, the metadata engine tags and bundles data records algorithmically, appends meta-data associated with business information (BI) to data records, facilitates portfolio optimization decisions, facilitates capturing relationships between different records and record types, and facilitates calculation, ranking, analysis, and reporting of opportunity scores;

a strategy engine, coupled to the ODI data repository in operation, including strategic tools for pulling in data from various sources, visualizing, interacting with, capturing and synthesizing insights so as to facilitate strategic planning;

a reporting engine, coupled to the ODI data repository in operation, to prepare and deliver interactive and printed reports;

a collaboration and business process workflow engine, coupled to the ODI data repository and the metadata engine in operation, that provides a collaborative workspace and a platform for workers to execute workflows for taking action on insights and data bundles;

an ODI transaction engine, coupled to the ODI data repository in operation, provides interaction between engines capable of writing to or reading from the ODI data repository;

an extract, transform, load (ETL) engine, coupled to the ODI data repository in operation, wherein, in operation, the ETL engine extracts data from outside sources, transforms the data to fit operational requirements, and loads the transformed data into to ODI data repository;

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the one or more communications protocols include a protocol selected from the group consisting of the financial information exchange (FIX) protocol, FIX extended markup language (FIXML), FIX adapted for streaming (FAST) protocol, a protocol for use in market communications.

6. The system of claim 4, further comprising a process engine, coupled to the ODI data repository, for business process management (BPM).

7. The system of claim 4, wherein the segmentation engine further provides data manipulation tools to facilitate compiling and loading data sets into external statistical analysis packages, and utilities to enhance visual representation, analysis and tabular reporting of statistical data properties.

8. The system of claim 4, wherein the metadata engine further facilitates interaction with data and performs other functionality that makes data more useful in a BI context.

9. The system of claim 4, wherein the strategic tools facilitate implementation of a strategy from the group consisting of needs delivery enhancement strategy, needs-based intellectual property (IP) strategy, innovation strategy, market growth strategy, consumption chain improvement strategy.

10. The system of claim 4, further comprising an ODI transformation rules engine for transforming input data into an ODI format and transforming ODI data into another format for output.

11. The system of claim 4, wherein, in operation, the ETA engine transforms the extracted data by applying rules or functions to the extracted data to derive data for loading into a target repository.

12. A method comprising:

creating an innovation strategy at an innovation strategy creation engine;

aggregating outcomes at an outcome aggregation engine;

identifying opportunities, including automating calculation, ranking, and reporting of opportunity scores with associated metadata, at an opportunity identification engine;

segmenting the market, including providing tools to interact with statistical analysis and modeling packages and import additional metadata tags into a job/outcome data schema, at a market segmentation engine;

defining the target strategy, including providing a tool to meta-tag jobs and outcome statements in respective data entities with thematic identifiers, workflow or business process dependencies, links to other data entities declared in the system, and correlation values, at a target strategy definition engine;

optimizing a portfolio at a portfolio optimization engine;

conceptualizing breakthroughs at a breakthrough conceptualization engine.

13. The method of claim 13, wherein creating an innovation strategy comprises:

facilitating gathering of baseline data on strategy variables;

generating reports that facilitate a decision of prioritizing projects to pursue viable objectives in a market growth strategy;

facilitating creation of an overall growth blueprint;

facilitating development of a consumption chain improvement strategy.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein aggregating outcomes comprises:

providing a generic hierarchy of jobs, job map template and information capturing and linking tools to map a job of interest and important related jobs and build a metadata library for sharing and retrieval;

providing outcome gathering common questions;

providing a shared environment for users to net outcomes down to a critical set;

providing an automated tool to index and link to or translate other market research into job and outcome statements;

providing tools to index and link media files to job and outcome statements.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein aggregating outcomes comprises:

extracting job and outcome statements directly into web survey tools;

facilitating procurement of customer lists for direct quantitative research;

providing rule-based utilities to assign survey participants to segments or groups for later analytical purposes;

providing tools to deploy surveys directly to customers, screen out known survey abusers, and randomize data collection for reliability;

assessing customer response data validity through co-variance assessments on like outcomes;

automating collection of price sensitivity input during initial quantitative research;

providing tools to import survey response data directly into a data model;

providing tools to optionally distribute data with population averages back to survey participants to encourage customer engagement;

providing search tools to find other jobs and outcomes from other company or benchmark research reports and a utility for affinity tagging.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein the identifying opportunities further includes:

building an displaying opportunity landscape diagrams;

providing graphic based utilities to enhance and interact with data depicted in the landscapes;

providing graphic based utilities to enhance and modify visual representations of data within landscape diagrams.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein the segmenting the market further comprises:

providing data manipulation tools to facilitate compiling and loading of datasets into external statistical analysis packages;

providing utilities to enhance the visual representation and tabular reporting of the statistical data properties.

18. The method of claim 13, wherein defining the target strategy further comprises:

providing a tool for end users to meta-tag jobs and outcome statements in respective data entities with other thematic tags;

delivering real-time tabular and visual representations of the tagged jobs and outcomes to facilitate innovation collaboration;

providing exports of jobs and outcomes;

providing a utility to scout, cull, assess the value of, and organize external sources of pre-made solutions against jobs and outcomes.

19. The method of claim 13, wherein the conceptualizing breakthroughs further comprises:

synthesizing preceding functionality to facilitate collaborative discovery of innovation breakthroughs addressing considerable unmet market needs;

isolating particularly attractive opportunities;

providing tools that compare similar jobs in markets having similar outcomes, and sharing related platform enabling technology paradigms.