* Market discovery software from Accelovation
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.
Under these search conditions, Accelovation finds and extracts inventions, technologies and methodologies such as “Ni/ceria anodes” that provide benefits to fuel cells. The search results come from multiple sources, including patents, research papers, journals, articles, blogs and user forums. Other unique discussion forums also might turn up the latest lab results, existing prototypes and names of experts working on solving similar problems.
So the researcher has quickly discovered several novel techniques to improve fuel cells to run on readily available natural gas, how to make them cheap and small enough for domestic purposes, as well as a list of companies and research labs to partner with. In a short period of time, the researcher is able to create a proposal to pursue this new market with a viable product leveraging the latest breakthrough innovations.
Technology scouting – i.e., looking to the outside world for “new” capabilities — is just one small example of how Accelovation cuts through the search engine clutter to pinpoint what a business researcher wants to know. Other uses include:
* Competitive scouting – Discover who might be your biggest emerging competitors.
* Trend scouting – Understand the impact of emerging trends.
* Market scouting – Discover new market needs to match your capabilities.
* Business model scouting – Explore opportunities to “change the game” in an existing market.
* Go-to-market scouting – Identify marketing messages, value propositions and channel partners.
And the best part of this business research? It can be done in a matter of hours instead of weeks or months as would be the case using old or manual search methods.
Accelovation sells its market discovery search capabilities as a subscription solution. Your annual subscription gets you access to the 3 billion or so indexed Web sites that are relevant for business; training for your employees who are to become the research analysts; and access to Accelovation consultants who can help you. The yearly subscription fee is based on the number of users you designate, and gives you license for unlimited searches.
There is no integration required, and nothing to configure. With a simple Web browser, you can be up and running in a day, and most of that time will be spent on training to understand the best uses of the system.
After spending a few hours learning about the Accelovation service, my lasting impression is, “THIS is what business users really need to find hidden gems of information on the World Wide Web.”
Read more about Accelovation in Jon Brodkin’s article, “Search technology with MIT roots takes hold.”
