DISCUS: Distributed Innovation and Scalable Collaboration in Uncertain Settings

Modern times challenge organizations and their leaders to adapt quickly and well to complex, fast-moving circumstances under trying conditions. Data sources are numerous, distributed and sometimes contradictory. Challenges are difficult to detect, diagnose, and counterattack when they are widely dispersed and constantly changing, often under uncertainty. Sources of knowledge and expertise are distributed, of varying quality, and difficult to integrate.

The goal of DISCUS is to make it possible to accelerate the decision-making process in circumstances that may change rapidly by integrating both human- and computer-generated knowledge in a scalable, distributed collaborative environment. DISCUS incorporates the following key elements of knowledge management:

• Interactive genetic algorithms
• Human-based genetic algorithms
• Competent and scalable genetic algorithms (machine-based)
• Flexible data and text mining (D2K/T2K)
• Chance discovery using Key Graphs

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DISCUS's integrated Web interface will make text and data mining and evolutionary computation accessible to users for greater human-computer collaboration. It will also provide a human-human collaboration infrastructure, including tools such as message boards, a chat screen, and conferencing technology.

The four phases of the DISCUS process are:

• Collect: concept gathering that will define the building blocks of the solution
• Relate: look for innovative ways of relating to the gathered concepts
• Create: solve the proposed problem in a creative way
• Donate: diffuse the achieved results

The following discussion workflow model shows how these components and activities work together within these phases.