How can a knowledge business avoid disaster when a bus kills its smartest employee? Anna and Todd Griffith, founders of Discovery Machine in Williamsport, anticipate that extreme scenario with software and methods that capture the knowledge of an organization’s “subject-matter experts”–employees who know the most about a business and implement its highest levels of skill.
She’s a knowledge engineer trained in computer and cognitive sciences. He’s a former professor of artificial intelligence at Bucknell University. Together they formed Discovery Machine to work with the Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) to pioneer programs that model the way that the smartest people in organizations do their jobs. Such pivotal performers embody the future of most knowledge-based companies, and the Discovery Machine is moving the technology it developed with DARPA and Small Business Research Innovation grants into commercial products for training and knowledge systems.
Work with DARPA has also opened doors for Discovery Machine with commercial giants, such as Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, and Textron, as well as smaller business enterprises. Its capacity to translate an organization’s best practices into a resource from which others can learn has also won recognition for Discovery Machine as a DARPA Small Business Success story.
“The market for this technology to capture expert information is growing,” Todd Griffith says. So the company is adding its own subject-matter experts as software developers, knowledge coordinators and business analysts.
Source: Discovery Machine, Todd Griffith
Writer: Joseph Plummer
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