Final Report Summary - DISCOVER-IT (Demonstrating technical and market feasibility of an advanced web semantic information system supporting SMEs innovation processes)
Executive Summary:
DISCOVER-IT is a demonstration project carried out by a consortium of 6 SMEs, 1 Large Organisation and 1 Research center.
The project demonstrated how an advanced information system based on Information Retrieval (IR) and Extraction (IE) techniques could support SMEs as well as other organisations’ technology innovation processes. In particular, DISCOVER-IT supports the search, share, and analysis of information (available in structured and unstructured information sources within the Web and in the enterprise) relevant for the technology innovation processes.
Several validation cases have been performed, with successful results in terms of quantitative and qualitative support that DISCOVER-IT provides to the people involved in technology intelligence activities for innovation processes.
Project Context and Objectives:
DISCOVER-IT aims to fill the current market gap existing between the SMEs’ need of innovating to keep their competitiveness, and the lack of specific information technologies focused on supporting the process of research and innovation, in particular in the first phase of the innovation process when the idea behind the innovation and its feasibility shall be defined and structured. In such phase, the 92% of organisations perform intelligence activities to search and analyse information such as patents, papers, competing products, funds available for R&D, etc. Usually such search is performed with generalist search engine, and there are no tools to perform contextual search, aggregate, share and analyse such information to support the inspiration and decision making process.
DISCOVER-IT fills such gap, offering a unique tool capable of supporting users in the information search, share and analysis, providing advanced natural language processing enabled features that allow to suggest technology innovations, as well as search and share relevant information. The DISCOVER-IT tool enters in the market of business intelligence tools offered as Service. Such market is continuously growing, as recent survey suggest [Grimes 2010]. Currently in the market it is not present any tool specialized in searching and extracting knowledge related to the innovation processes, this represents a huge opportunity for DISCOVER-IT, which can fill such gap and have an impact at European and worldwide level.
The project started from the results achieved in the INSEARCH research project (funded by the European Commission under the FP7 Research for the benefit of SMEs scheme), and through technical developments and integration activities has demonstrated the usefulness of such research result in several use cases.
Project Results:
The DISCOVER-IT project has produced the following technological results:
- The project demonstrated the support that organisations can obtain by the usage of advanced knowledge search and retrieve features able to contextualise a search with respect to a certain domain of usage. The system is capable to expand queries, and rank results taking into account the specific domain in which the users is acting, by applying Latent Semantic Analysis techniques.
- One of the most interesting feature demonstrated is the application of Natural Language Processing analysis to documents, to extract pattern capable to suggest innovation. A parser and relative analytical tools able to search patterns within documents to the level of assigning to single lemmas the specific role in the grammar (verb, noun, adjective) compose the NLP module. The NLP is used also for the application of a TRIZ (theory of inventive problem solving) method to model technical problems, namely the Object Action Tool (OAT) analysis. Through such methodology, making use of NLP, the system is capable to retrieve triples off Object / Action / Tools from millions of documents, aggregating them to suggest possible innovation, meaning possible Tools performing similar actions to the action performed by the system under study.
- The Crawler and related indexing and monitoring functionalities: the crawler is able, starting from a set of URL provided by users, to crawl the web with a certain level of depth (also to be defined by users) and indexing pages that can then be retrieved after specific searchers of users. Moreover, the crawler will keep monitoring a set of URL to report possible news of such URL (example: an URL of a competitor)
After eighteen months of activities, the results of the project have been integrated in different Information Technology systems, in particular within the Innovation Place portal used by one of the partners (www.innovationplace.eu) within the LIGHTJUMPS project (www.lightjumps.eu) and in the CATER project (www.cater-transport-time-efficiency.eu). Several activities have been performed to arrive to a high level of usability, as well as reach high-level performances in terms of reliability, scalability, and capability to interact with existing legacy systems of users. Moreover, specific applications have been developed to allow the integration of the information flow of DISCOVER-IT in usual organisations’ day-by-day operations, such as information push functionality towards email clients.
The demonstration was realised through several use cases defined by the project partners to test the system in their specific scenarios, mainly:
1. Innovation processes in Manufacturing SMEs and Large Enterprises: with the collaboration of TACORE, EOLANE and ICA
2. Searchers and extraction of external knowledge relevant for High-level research center activities: with the contribution of Tue
3. Innovation management companies using the tool to run innovation projects in the behalf of their clients: with the collaboration of CIAOTECH and CIVITTA
4. Integration of DISCOVER-IT modules in legacy knowledge management systems: with the contribution of INNEN and IQser
5. Integration of DISCOVER-IT modules in existing search engines for wide usage: with the contribution of INNEN and CIAOTECH
The project also defined a detailed market strategy through a market analysis, and the identification of the most appropriate marketing strategy to commercially exploit the project results.
Potential Impact:
DISCOVER-IT is a highly innovative search tool providing users in a single place all the relevant information needed for research and technological innovation processes.
The project potential impact is huge, taking into account the outcomes of the market analysis performed in DISCOVER-IT as well as in previous projects (INSEARCH). As matter of fact, more than 100 organisations have been interviewed, and the outcomes in terms of interest in the tool, willingness to pay, usability and offering modality has been very positive.
The results of the market analysis realised during the first project’s period, as well as the definition of the market strategy, during the second project’s period, paved the way to produce the exploitation strategies of the project results and the exploitation agreements among partners, as well as the IPR management.
The outcomes of the project are described as the overall information system (validated by user) and a set of assets, part of the information system, to search, retrieve and organise information related to technology innovation processes. The information system has been developed integrating and fine tuning some of the results of the INSEARCH project in an open source framework.
List of Websites:
www.discoverit-project.eu
Innovation Engineering Srl (Project Coordinator)
Andrea CIAPETTI (Point of Contact of Innovation Engineering Srl)
email: a.ciapetti@innovationengineering.eu
DISCOVER-IT is a demonstration project carried out by a consortium of 6 SMEs, 1 Large Organisation and 1 Research center.
The project demonstrated how an advanced information system based on Information Retrieval (IR) and Extraction (IE) techniques could support SMEs as well as other organisations’ technology innovation processes. In particular, DISCOVER-IT supports the search, share, and analysis of information (available in structured and unstructured information sources within the Web and in the enterprise) relevant for the technology innovation processes.
Several validation cases have been performed, with successful results in terms of quantitative and qualitative support that DISCOVER-IT provides to the people involved in technology intelligence activities for innovation processes.
Project Context and Objectives:
DISCOVER-IT aims to fill the current market gap existing between the SMEs’ need of innovating to keep their competitiveness, and the lack of specific information technologies focused on supporting the process of research and innovation, in particular in the first phase of the innovation process when the idea behind the innovation and its feasibility shall be defined and structured. In such phase, the 92% of organisations perform intelligence activities to search and analyse information such as patents, papers, competing products, funds available for R&D, etc. Usually such search is performed with generalist search engine, and there are no tools to perform contextual search, aggregate, share and analyse such information to support the inspiration and decision making process.
DISCOVER-IT fills such gap, offering a unique tool capable of supporting users in the information search, share and analysis, providing advanced natural language processing enabled features that allow to suggest technology innovations, as well as search and share relevant information. The DISCOVER-IT tool enters in the market of business intelligence tools offered as Service. Such market is continuously growing, as recent survey suggest [Grimes 2010]. Currently in the market it is not present any tool specialized in searching and extracting knowledge related to the innovation processes, this represents a huge opportunity for DISCOVER-IT, which can fill such gap and have an impact at European and worldwide level.
The project started from the results achieved in the INSEARCH research project (funded by the European Commission under the FP7 Research for the benefit of SMEs scheme), and through technical developments and integration activities has demonstrated the usefulness of such research result in several use cases.
Project Results:
The DISCOVER-IT project has produced the following technological results:
- The project demonstrated the support that organisations can obtain by the usage of advanced knowledge search and retrieve features able to contextualise a search with respect to a certain domain of usage. The system is capable to expand queries, and rank results taking into account the specific domain in which the users is acting, by applying Latent Semantic Analysis techniques.
- One of the most interesting feature demonstrated is the application of Natural Language Processing analysis to documents, to extract pattern capable to suggest innovation. A parser and relative analytical tools able to search patterns within documents to the level of assigning to single lemmas the specific role in the grammar (verb, noun, adjective) compose the NLP module. The NLP is used also for the application of a TRIZ (theory of inventive problem solving) method to model technical problems, namely the Object Action Tool (OAT) analysis. Through such methodology, making use of NLP, the system is capable to retrieve triples off Object / Action / Tools from millions of documents, aggregating them to suggest possible innovation, meaning possible Tools performing similar actions to the action performed by the system under study.
- The Crawler and related indexing and monitoring functionalities: the crawler is able, starting from a set of URL provided by users, to crawl the web with a certain level of depth (also to be defined by users) and indexing pages that can then be retrieved after specific searchers of users. Moreover, the crawler will keep monitoring a set of URL to report possible news of such URL (example: an URL of a competitor)
After eighteen months of activities, the results of the project have been integrated in different Information Technology systems, in particular within the Innovation Place portal used by one of the partners (www.innovationplace.eu) within the LIGHTJUMPS project (www.lightjumps.eu) and in the CATER project (www.cater-transport-time-efficiency.eu). Several activities have been performed to arrive to a high level of usability, as well as reach high-level performances in terms of reliability, scalability, and capability to interact with existing legacy systems of users. Moreover, specific applications have been developed to allow the integration of the information flow of DISCOVER-IT in usual organisations’ day-by-day operations, such as information push functionality towards email clients.
The demonstration was realised through several use cases defined by the project partners to test the system in their specific scenarios, mainly:
1. Innovation processes in Manufacturing SMEs and Large Enterprises: with the collaboration of TACORE, EOLANE and ICA
2. Searchers and extraction of external knowledge relevant for High-level research center activities: with the contribution of Tue
3. Innovation management companies using the tool to run innovation projects in the behalf of their clients: with the collaboration of CIAOTECH and CIVITTA
4. Integration of DISCOVER-IT modules in legacy knowledge management systems: with the contribution of INNEN and IQser
5. Integration of DISCOVER-IT modules in existing search engines for wide usage: with the contribution of INNEN and CIAOTECH
The project also defined a detailed market strategy through a market analysis, and the identification of the most appropriate marketing strategy to commercially exploit the project results.
Potential Impact:
DISCOVER-IT is a highly innovative search tool providing users in a single place all the relevant information needed for research and technological innovation processes.
The project potential impact is huge, taking into account the outcomes of the market analysis performed in DISCOVER-IT as well as in previous projects (INSEARCH). As matter of fact, more than 100 organisations have been interviewed, and the outcomes in terms of interest in the tool, willingness to pay, usability and offering modality has been very positive.
The results of the market analysis realised during the first project’s period, as well as the definition of the market strategy, during the second project’s period, paved the way to produce the exploitation strategies of the project results and the exploitation agreements among partners, as well as the IPR management.
The outcomes of the project are described as the overall information system (validated by user) and a set of assets, part of the information system, to search, retrieve and organise information related to technology innovation processes. The information system has been developed integrating and fine tuning some of the results of the INSEARCH project in an open source framework.
List of Websites:
www.discoverit-project.eu
Innovation Engineering Srl (Project Coordinator)
Andrea CIAPETTI (Point of Contact of Innovation Engineering Srl)
email: a.ciapetti@innovationengineering.eu