Black Box Innovation, Systems and Methods

• US 20120226650A1
• Filed: 03/05/2012
• Published: 09/06/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/03/2011
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Nicholas J. Witchey
• Original Assignee: Nicholas J. Witchey
• Inventors: Witchey, Nicholas
• Application Number:
  US13/411,984
• Publication Number:
  US 20120226650A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 706/50
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/04 Inference or reasoning models

Abstract

An innovation expert system is presented. The expert system can include one or more reasoning engines capable of generating a hypothesis representing a possible path for innovation between a concept and a technological class. The hypothesis can be validated to some extent by analysis or simulation.

Claims

1. An innovation expert system comprising:

A patent database storing one or more patent concept map objects representing a concept map associated with patent literature; and

A reasoning engine configured to;

derive correlations between the concept map objects and patent technology classes associated with the plurality of patents;

infer a quantified hypothesis representing a suggestion that at least one of concept map objects could relate to a technology class according to a confidence level as a function of similar concept maps objects and where the at least one concept map object relatively lacks a derived correlation with the technology class; and

present the hypothesis as a recommended avenue of innovation.

2. The expert system of claim 1, wherein the reasoning engine is configured to apply at least one of deductive, adductive, and inductive reasoning to infer the hypothesis.

3. The expert system of claim 1, wherein the reasoning engine is further configured to compare multiple hypothesis with respect to the correlations to derive a ranking.

4. The expert system of claim 1, further comprising a validation engine configured to compare the hypothesis against a first correlation derived from a second, different plurality of patents and to generate a relative merit of the hypothesis relative to the first correlation.

5. The expert system of claim 4, wherein the validation engine is further configured to adjust a ranking of the hypotheses based on the relative merit.

6. The expert system of claim 1, wherein the hypothesis is presented as a quantified white-space map.

7. The expert system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of patents comprises patents from differing jurisdictions.

8. The expert system of claim 7, wherein the concept map objects comprises jurisdiction agnostic concept maps.

9. The expert system of claim 8, wherein the concept map objects are stored according to a normalized concept map structure.

10. The expert system of claim 1, further comprising a concept map generator configured to generate the concept map objects based on applying an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to the plurality of patents.

11. The expert system of claim 10, wherein the AI algorithm include at least one of the following case-based reasoning, simulated annealing, semantic analysis, and genetic algorithms.

12. The expert system of claim 1, wherein the hypothesis comprises a recommended mapping of the at least one concept map object to a technology class definition.