My interview by JupiterMedia back in May is below. The original article can be found at http://www.semanticweb.com/article.php/3749916.

The ‘Digital Human’ and the Semantic Web
May 29, 2008
By Jennifer Zaino

No doubt about it, the technology behind the semantic web is truly disruptive. The challenge for companies will be to figure out how to provide applications based on it that match business drivers and meet business goals. Oh, and those applications had better account for the fact that understanding the “digital” human component — within and without organizations — is critical to those ends.

“With a disruptive technology such as the semantic web, there’s a need to really talk about the current state of how we develop semantic technologies and applications,” says Dr. Rachel Yager, director of semantic web company Machintas Inc., which is developing technologies to enable people to better represent themselves in their digital lives. “Not small-scale stuff, but large, enterprise-strength applications.”

In a presentation to be delivered at the LinkedData Planet conference taking place June 17 and 18 in New York, she’ll be doing just that, in a discussion that explores the challenges and approaches for effective semantic systems development. “In the software development lifecycle, what are the best approaches and processes and methodologies that one can use to start looking into semantic applications, and to cater to the evolving technologies in this exciting domain,” Yager says.

Indeed, the semantic web community is vibrant … and at a crossroads in terms of making this disruptive technology viable, says Yager.

“I really think that when we are dealing with the semantic technologies of today, there are some positions that a company can take for the future to better harness the evolving nature of this technology,” she says.

Semantic web technologies can help close the gaps that still exist in IT environments in terms of scalability, flexibility, and agility, and companies can take advantage of that to develop enterprise-class systems that can uncover and exploit the linkages among people, their own understanding of concepts, other data sets, and mass intelligence.

Don’t underestimate how important it is to consider the people part of the link. Human beings and their digital lives are now part of the web fabric, says Yager, and the line between the real and the virtual human is growing increasingly fuzzy. “The human person is part of the link, of the linked data planet — in fact, the most important link,” she says. “We’re in pursuit of flexibility in the name of building agile software for connecting better with people, representing people better in this linked data planet –that is needed.” Human relationships need to be understood to meet business objectives, she says.

For example, a business’ core assets are its employees, and the knowledge that is linked to those people, individually and as part of the collective intelligence, is critical to fulfilling enterprise missions.

“What distinguishes one company from another is the culture and the people and how they make things work,” says Yager. “The representation of people and the understanding of people and linking all that information — we now have a powerful and new way that we can have a richer representation of ourselves in the data on the web. And companies have to care about that, because their employees are going to be part of that.” The same is true about leveraging that understanding on the customer front. “There will be a stage when humans are the content,” Yager says.

Machintas, with its expertise in computational intelligence, is headed in the direction of helping companies understand the human part of the equation, by developing technologies that enable one to represent himself better in his digital life. It aims to bridge the gap between the way a computer and human can think, and to better link the human to the computer. Among the technologies it is working on to achieve these ends is adding a new dimension to semantics, in the area of granular computing. Granular computing, Yager says, is a confluence of technologies, including “fuzzy sets,” that allow someone to represent rich human concepts in a formal way in the computer. That’s a challenge, as concepts such as young and old, rich and poor and even risk, can mean something very different to different people.

The Top 10 Global Brands as reported by BusinessWeek and Interbrand on September 2008 are:

1 COCA-COLA
2 IBM
3 MICROSOFT
4 GE
5 NOKIA
6 TOYOTA
7 INTEL
8 McDONALD’S
9 DISNEY
10 GOOGLE

BusinessWeek and Interbrand follow an interesting 3-step approach in measuring the “economic value” of a brand, as quoted below:

STEP ONE is calculating how much of a company’s total sales falls under a particular brand. In some cases the brand encompasses nearly all sales, as with McDonald’s. In others it is tied to only one set of products: Louis Vuitton within LVMH Group. Using reports from analysts at JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanly, Interbrand projects five years of sales and earnings tied to each brand’s products and services.

STEP TWO is ca1culating how much of those earnings results from the power of the brand. Interbrand strips out operating costs, taxes, and charges for the capital employed to arrive at the earnings attributable to intangible assets. Inlerbrand then estimates the brand’s effect on earnings relative to other intangible assets such as patents and management strength.

FINALLY, those future earnings are discounted to arrive at a net present value. lnterbrand discounts against current interest rates and also against the brand’s overall risk profile to factor in brand strength. Factors include market leadership, stability, and global reach-or the ability to cross both geographic and cultural borders.

The final result values the brand as a financial asset. BusinessWeek and Interbrand believe this figure comes closest to representing a brand’s true economic worth.

April is a favorite time to think about innovation… and it ain’t over yet.  
Two weeks ago, I gathered the Innovation Index – Most Innovative Companies.  I saw BusinessWeek just updated the 2008 list – The World’s Most Innovative Companies (read below). 
Not surprising, the consistent players in the top 10 are Apple, Google, and GE.  

The World’s Most Innovative Companies
Smart ideas for tough times: The 50 companies that make up our annual ranking nurture cultures that value creative people in good times and bad

1 APPLE
2 GOOGLE
3 TOYOTA MOTOR
4 GENERAL ELECTRIC
5 MICROSOFT
6 TATA GROUP
7 NINTENDO
8 PROCTER & GAMBLE
9 SONY
10 NOKIA
11 AMAZON.COM
12 IBM
13 RESEARCH IN MOTION
14 BMW
15 HEWLETT-PACKARD
16 HONDA MOTOR
17 WALT DISNEY
18 GENERAL MOTORS
19 RELIANCE INDUSTRIES
20 BOEING
21 GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP
22 3M
23 WAL-MART STORES
24 TARGET
25 FACEBOOK
26 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS
27 AT&T
28 VIRGIN GROUP
29 AUDI
30 MCDONALD’S
31 DAIMLER
32 STARBUCKS
33 EBAY
34 VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS
35 CISCO SYSTEMS
36 ING GROEP
37 SINGAPORE AIRLINES
38 SIEMENS
39 COSTCO WHOLESALE
40 HSBC
41 BANK OF AMERICA
42 EXXON MOBIL
43 NEWS CORP.
44 BP
45 NIKE
46 DELL
47 VODAFONE GROUP
48 INTEL
49 SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
50 AMERICAN EXPRESS

Google seems to be the top choice for measuring up when it comes to innovation. This April, a number of magazines analyze the makeup of Google and its success factors.  In the blogosphere, Google’s innovation recipe (written by consultaglobal.com) gave a great summary of Harvard Business Review’s article (Reverse engineering Google’s innovation machine), and FastCompany’s article (The Faces and voices of the world’s most innovative company). 

I read with interest from Portfolio (Search Mission by Russ Mitchell, April 2008 Issue) that Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page chose a CEO in 2001, Dr. Eric Schmidt, who had previously worked in Sun Microsystems.  While Yahoo, in the same year, chose a CEO who is a Hollywood insider. Since 2001, there are dramatic differences in the performance and culture of the 2 companies with Google’s $5.7B profit in 2007 dominating the online advertisement world, and Yahoo now fighting a hostile takeover from Microsoft.

Goolge CEO’s training and background surely lend itself to the Google’s innovation fabric. 

Recently at a Video 2.0 Meetup meeting in NYC, I was impressed with Sun’s innovative spirit, they continue to be interesting and contributing to the open source community.  Google’s CEO must have grown up with good old-fashioned structured processes and methodologies.

In the face of hypes and trends, sound management practice counts.  Engineering best practice is the balancing act to disruptive product strategy and technology.

Tracking the innovation index from:

• FastCompany (2008 March)
• Fortune (2008 March)
• Wired (2007 March)
• BusinessWeek (2007 March)

See all the lists below.  Google, Apple, and GE are consistently appearing in the top 10.

FastCompany’s innovation index:
1 GOOGLE
2 APPLE
3 FACEBOOK
4 GE
5 IDEO
6 NIKE
7 NOKIA
8 ALIBABA
9 AMAZON
10 NINTENDO
11 PROCTER & GAMBLE
12 NEWS CORP.
13 AFFYMETRIX
14 DISNEY
15 SAMSUNG
16 METHOD
17 TARGET
18 HP
19 TESCO
20 AUSRA
21 TIMBERLAND
22 IBM
23 ARUP
24 ANOMALY
25 AUTODESK
26 HERMAN MILLER
27 REALNETWORKS
28 LG ELECTRONICS
29 BOEING
30 OMNITURE
31 IROBOT

Fortune’s innovation index:
1 Apple
2 Nike
3 Medco Health Solutions
4 Procter & Gamble
5 Herman Miller
6 Walt Disney
7 Fortune Brands
8 Burlington Northern Santa Fe
9 McDonald’s
10 ProLogis
11 Starbucks
12 Knight
13 Whole Foods Market
14 BMW
15 3M
16 Genentech
17 FedEx
18 MGM Mirage
19 Accenture
20 American Express
21 CarMax
22 News Corp.
23 YRC Worldwide
24 St. Jude Medical
25 Starwood Hotels & Resorts

Wired’s 2007 innovation index:
1 Google
2 Apple
3 Genentech
4 Samsung
5 News Corp.
6 Nintendo
7 Salesforce.com
8 Cisco
9 General Electric
10 Nvidia
11 Baidu
12 Toyota
13 SunPower
14 Infosys
15 Medtronic
16 Level 3
17 Exelon
18 Netflix
19 Verizon
20 Electronic Arts
21 Monsanto
22 Garmin
23 Amazon.com
24 NTT DoCoMo
25 EMC
26 Intercontinental Exchange
27 Comcast
28 BP
29 Disney
30 Yahoo
31 Boeing
32 eBay
33 Flextronics
34 Corning
35 Gen-Probe
36 TSMC
37 Lenovo
38 IBM
39 Intel
40 Microsoft

BusinessWeek’s innovation index:

1 APPLE
2 GOOGLE
3 TOYOTA MOTOR
4 GENERAL ELECTRIC
5 MICROSOFT
6 PROCTER & GAMBLE
7 3M
8 WALT DISNEY CO.
9 IBM
10 SONY
11 WAL-MART
12 HONDA MOTOR
13 NOKIA
14 STARBUCKS
15 TARGET
16 BMW
17 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS
18 VIRGIN GROUP
19 INTEL
20 AMAZON.COM
21 BOEING
22 DELL
23 GENENTECH
24 EBAY
25 CISCO SYSTEMS
26 MOTOROLA
27 SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
28 IDEO
28 IKEA
30 DAIMLERCHRYSLER
31 HEWLETT-PACKARD
32 NIKE
33 BP
34 RESEARCH IN MOTION
35 AT&T
36 CITIGROUP
37 VERIZON
38 ROYAL PHILIPS ELECTRONICS
39 NINTENDO
40 COSTCO WHOLESALE
41 VOLKSWAGEN
42 PFIZER
43 BEST BUY
44 JOHNSON & JOHNSON
45 AMGEN
46 MERCK
47 NEWS CORPORATION
48 MCDONALD’S
49 LG ELECTRONICS
50 EXXONMOBIL