KNOWLEDGE

"We know now that the source of wealth is something specifically human: knowledge.

If we apply knowledge to tasks we already know how to do, we call it 'productivity'.

If we apply knowledge to tasks that are new and different we call it 'innovation'.

Only knowledge allows us to achieve these two goals.”

-- Peter Drucker

Knowledge is the primary vehicle for productivity and innovation across major industries: financial services, healthcare, aerospace/defense, telecommunications, media, and more. The challenge of transforming knowledge into operation is a crippling productivity and innovation bottleneck.

Intentional Software removes this bottleneck using a radical new approach to process knowledge: a business expert's knowledge is recorded in a form that can directly be turned into work products, for example running software. The approach consists of an end-to-end knowledge engineering process:

- Step One is using a specific Knowledge Workbench to support the structure and meaning of the knowledge tuned for a specific knowledge type or domain. A Knowledge Workbench is knowledge sensitive in that it understands the meaning of the content specific to that business domain.

- Step Two is a knowledge expert using the Knowledge Workbench to record business knowledge. As opposed to using Word or Excel to record their knowledge, the Knowledge Workbench can process the knowledge at the level of what the intention is, not unlike a formula in a spreadsheet or a grammar checker in a word processor.

- Step Three is applying the knowledge content. Examples of work products from the knowledge content can be calculations, tests, software, web sites, procedure manuals, check lists, education material etc. These knowledge intensive work products may not be new in themselves, but traditionally they have been very labor intensive to create. Now they can be created at a far lower cost, much more rapidly and at a significantly higher quality.

Knowledge processing capability will transform the way knowledge products are created, leading to acceleration in business innovation.

EXAMPLE FROM INSURANCE INDUSTRY

An example solution for the financial sector has been developed together with Capgemini. The Capgemini Actuarial and Pension Workbench is a solution for specification and verification of Life Insurance and Pension Plans. The Workbench is intended for actuaries and pension analysts to define life insurance and pension plans. The Capgemini Workbench includes actuarial formulas, temporal business rules and test cases that run live during editing to ensure correctness. The business knowledge about Pension Plan administration is encoded in the Pension Workbench, and specific Pension Plans are created as versioned and audited documents using the workbench. From the Pension Plan document, calculation engines for Pension Fund administration can be generated.