New Approach for Utilizing the Results from Research Work: Scope Water—A System for the Cooperative Processing of Expertise
Martin Kerner · Water International · 2005
It is a well known fact that much of the research work funded by billions of Euro of public money leads to knowledge, ideas, and visions that are not used by commercial end-users but remain underused in the heads of the researchers. Research funding institutions and research institutes undertake great efforts to solve that problem and have established structures to improve the transfer process. However, their approaches and methods do not take into account the fact that most of the knowledge obtained in research work consists of bits of information isolated and diffusely scattered, often not directly fit for use in applications, which implies ideas that are not published and therefore not easily accessible. Here, we introduce an interactive communication and management system, Scope Water, which is constructed to effectively explore and process all that kind of information by using a structured approach to proceed step-by-step towards the solving of a specific problem. Starting with the global exploration of knowledge and ideas from experts, passing an objective assessment of this information, and leading finally to a cooperative creation of a concept for problem solving by specialists. It thus allows us to provide end users of research work quick and comprehensive access to recent research results tailored to their specific demands. Scope Water has been developed on the basis of recent advances in cybernetic management experienced in team meetings. Only recently, Scope Water was adapted to serve the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and was coupled to the professional knowledge management system “K-Infinity.”