“What happens when robotics research at UC Berkeley is combined with the classic process of Brainstorming and Social Media?”
The Collaborative Discovery Engine is being announced today at the Web 2.0 Summit Conference in San Francisco, CA. The system was developed by Hybrid Wisdom Labs, a new company emerging from more than a decade of robotics and social media research at UC Berkeley. Hybrid Wisdom’s patented, lab-refined technology has been used by General Motors, Unilever, Humana, and the US Department of State. Hybrid Wisdom is offering the system to enterprises as a new way to scalably and rapidly generate insights from their customers and employees. The company is also offering a prize for the most insightful new application of their system.
Innovation is critical for any enterprise to stay competitive and now companies are turning to social media to leverage the collective intelligence of their customers and employees. However, existing social innovation tools use list- based discussion interfaces which don’t scale well and can grow unmanageable for these enterprises. “Linear lists are often dominated by extreme postings that can oversimplify and overshadow the rich variety of viewpoints,” said Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs.
Collaborative Discovery combines ideas from brainstorming, social media, and an unlikely source — robotics — into a new process that uses dynamic visualization and analytic algorithms to rapidly filter insightful solutions based on input from thousands of participants. “Robots have to be aware of space and geometry, and to rapidly filter vast amounts of complex data,” says Ken Goldberg, UC Berkeley professor and CTO of Hybrid Wisdom.
The Collaborative Discovery Engine eliminates lists and uses new visualization methods to instantly display where users and ideas stand based on the diversity of their opinions. “Collaborative Discovery has two key benefits over existing social innovation tools: scale and speed,” says David Wong, CEO of Hybrid Wisdom. “It scales to support thousands of participants without sacrificing speed in finding the best solutions.”
Hybrid Wisdom Labs is a new company emerging from more than a decade of robotics and social media research at UC Berkeley. Hybrid Wisdom’s patented, lab-refined technology has been used by General Motors, Unilever, Humana, and the US Department of State.