Have you ever watched a demonstration of information technology, and you get more excited as the demo progresses? You find yourself saying, “Yes, I want this! I need this!” I watched just such a demo the other day, and I have to tell you about the product. You simply must forward my article to your business development department right after you read this.

What has me so fired up? It’s new search technology that the vendor calls “market discovery software.” It is brought to you by Accelovation, a company borne from the MIT Media Lab. That pedigree alone should tell you this is a product worth a few minutes of your discovery time.

Our world is full of rather ordinary search engines that simply look for a word or phrase embedded in Web pages, returning scores of “hits” ranked by popularity that may or may not be what you’re looking for. Worse yet, there’s no automated way to correlate bits of information that are really the heart of your search. You need to weed through all the search results yourself and hope to find those few needles in the haystack that are actually useful, and then compile your own summary of the relevant results. For this reason, Google and other search engines are weak tools when you have a complex business search.

By contrast, Accelovation is specifically designed for business searches that can help you uncover a new technology, solution, business trend, need or opportunity. Accelovation automates the time-consuming manual process of doing research and coming to conclusions. It does so by extracting deep meanings in conversational linguistics. An ordinary sentence is broken down into parts such as the problem, the solution, the beneficiaries, an action, or a benefit. These parts of the sentence are then matched to your search terms to return highly relevant information.

For example, take the sentence “The use of Ni/ceria anodes enables solid-oxide fuel cells to use natural gas as fuel to generate electricity for home owners.” Accelovation would parse the sentence as follows:

* Solution – Ni/ceria anodes.
* Benefits – Use natural gas as fuel; generate electricity.
* Beneficiaries – Solid-oxide fuel cells; home owners.

So let’s say a fuel cell manufacturer is interested in exploring ways to provide an economical power generator for domestic applications. A researcher could quickly enter a search asking, “What technologies can improve fuel cell performance for home use?” All we really want are the potential “new” innovations that improve the operation, performance and cost of fuel cells so they can be used for domestic purposes.

Linda Musthaler is a principal analyst with Essential Solutions Corporation.