Dr. Giovanni Dosi, "Sources" Parts III, D.

[Innovation]

D. How Organizations Build Knowledge Bases

Continuing on with section III of the "Sources" document, Dosi notes that in this past century the focus of research and development has been as a result of dedicated organizational scope and size. Also noting the relative decline of opportunities for individuals to conduct research and file for patents. It really has been a century better suited to the larger institutions than it has been for the individuals.

An interesting point is raised by Dosi. He refers to Adam Smith and notes

"Adam Smith who first emphasized the possible dichotomy between "system learning" on the one hand and the degrading brutality which repetitive and mindless tasks could imply for some groups of workers, on the other."

In addition to the organizational focus and repetitive brutality of which they operate, Dosi notes that;

"For example, the emergence of the modern factory has also implied "de-skilling of particular categories of craftsman; the abilities of several groups of artisan-like workers became redundant, the skills of making particular machines became increasingly separated for the skills involved in using them; the introduction of automated mass production in big plants has further reduced the knowledge required of significant portions of the work force."

We have to recall that Dosi wrote this paper in 1988. If I remember correctly by that time, hard drives in PC's were still a fairly new item, and had recently expanded their capacity all the way to 10 MB. I note this because of the age and quality of the document may on the whole be pertinent in today's environment, this particular section may not necessarily be as valid in the 21st century.

That companies can out innovate and out produce individuals in terms of research and development are things of the past. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule like Steve Jobs and Dean Kamen. However they are the superstars of the research and development world these days. It is also well known that these people are still responsible for the products that are produced by their respective organizations.

We also see that the people that are constructively idealized as heroes are not necessarily the business leaders, lawyers and bureaucrats but people like Jobs, Wozniak, Kamen, Moore and unfortunately Gates. This I think is a result of the ability of individuals to overcome the dominance of the organization of the past century and that is why we look up to them. I also feel this is a trend that is only beginning.

Today with the Internet their is no possible way that a company can out innovate an individual. Working in isolation with a handful of ideas. The resources at the disposal of individuals is in many ways superior in terms of performance then most of today's organizations. I hesitate to even mention the motivation of the individual vs. the organization. That we, may I suggest, regress to the 19th century in terms of the ability of craftsmen to build their own tools would be a far superior world than in which we live in now. How many times has someone stated in the last 40 years that "the people in the design division just don't get it. I wish they would only listen to us."

That an individual can outperform a classic hierarchical bureaucratic research and development division is a given, and the "Plurality" document is evidence of this trend. I only state this fact to contrast the poor performance of our hierarchically based organizations of today. When individuals meet other individuals and groups with similar desires and passions through the wonders of the Internet, these people can organize and collaborate and the world is far better off.

Referring back to the Ray Kurzweil's blog entry that I wrote, located here, provides an understanding of how there could be 200 times as many changes in the 21st as opposed to the 20th century. And if that is too much to believe at this time, I think that we can all agree that irrespective of the size of the exponential growth, or the number of times the changes occur over the previous century, we know it won't be the hierarchical bureaucracy that brings any of it to us.

In the next entry, section IV "Opportunities incentives and the inter-sectoral patterns of innovation."

February Business Report

[business report]

Effective March 1, 2006 we will be launching our marketing strategy in the Calgary area. Our resources are limited so this will be a low key, but highly effective local 4 month program. The purpose will be to build off the entries in the blog, and get some people commenting. Although it has only been two months I feel that the content value is high and we need to start raising the profile with the producers.

This higher profile, I expect, will start the flow of some donations and this experiment will become a defacto operating company. We are more or less limited to the local market at this time due to financial resources. Hopefully we will have some good news soon in which we are able to expand our geographical scope, because Genesys is a global oil and gas solution.

Some time during the month of March we will begin to see the blog fall within the google search results. I will also report the site to yahoo! and other major search engines to build traffic that way as well.

I am very pleased with the quality of the topics being discussed. I foresee no change in this quality as there are many things that need to be decided upon, discussed, researched and communicated through this very effective medium. In terms of content we have only begun. The source of interesting things happening in oil and gas, and in technology, are providing ample writing material.

We have now made some additional decisions regarding the technical architecture. Please review the data located here; some further justification of those changes are as follows.

• Moved to the Ingres Open Source database. I was concerned with Oracle and IBM's commitment to BPEL. I don't think BPEL should be used in a service oriented architecture.
  
• Elimination of AJAX and all but one dynamic language used in non-production code.
  

One area that I have spent time on is with the PPDM data model and ontology. I have come to the conclusion that these products are not usable for our purposes due to the unique nature of the organizational perspective we use. The JOC does not lend itself to the same manner of dealing with partners, many of the data elements affected as well.

It is therefore necessary to continue with defining the architecture as a pure system. Moving the PPDM into our design alleviates many hours of excellent work done by those people. However, the joint operating committee is just to unique to retrofit a design that was prepared for silo'd organizations. The financial resources budget for the PPDM membership has therefore been moved under the w3c standard, and will be investigated as to what the cost implications of this move involve.

As in February's report, the objective of this months report is to start the development process with some tools and infrastructure.

• Revenue to the end of February: $0.00
  

March 1, 2006 budget items. (All costs are in U.S. dollars and include a 33% premium for the development copyright fee.)

• Sun Grid The first thing we need is a home for the code. The grid provides everything we need in this instance, and the Grid that I selected was Sun's. At $1 per processor hour, a very affordable way to secure the resources we need. I think that our first years requirements would be amply satisfied with 10,000 hours of processing for the remainder of 2006 calendar year. Total requirement = $13,300
• PPDM (Public Petroleum Data Model) Makes our development life a little easier through a standard database model. Fortunately we have projected revenues of < $1 million, therefore, our fees for membership to access the data model are small. Total requirement = $CANCELLED see note above.
• Ingres Open Source database and part time DBA, Total requirements = $57,500.
• Collabnet. I would like to have a generous budget for this critical tool. Provides the code management, community process, project management and issue management. Budget includes tools, appropriate setup and consulting services. Total requirements = $34,500
• General and Administrative, first 6 months of operation Total requirements = $69,000
• Membership in W3C Total requirements = $9,500
• Total Capital and Operating costs estimate, first half 2006... $184,000
  

Notes:

• Sponsor, producer, and user commitments are all accepted.
  
• Please recall that this community is and will be supported by the producers. Based on an annual $ assessment per barrel of oil.
• For 2006 the assessment was fixed at $1 per boe per day per year.
  
• A company such as Encana in Canada would therefore be expected to support the community to the tune of $700,000 for the 2006 calendar year.
  
• These Monthly Business Report budgets are being proposed as a pay as you go basis for 2006 to support the community and ensure the community develops in the manner that is expected.
  
• Your donations are greatly appreciated, no donations means no work is being done.

"The future of digital commons" on MIT video

[intellectual property] (Click on the title of this entry for the excellent MIT video)

Two librarians provide some of the most thought provoking discussion on the topic of copyright law, access to information and the impact these items have on users and creators of intellectual property. Users should understand the key attributes of copyright law and this is a good place to start. Understanding copyright law may become as basic of knowledge as how you now drive to work in the morning. Although the video is a little over two hours, it will be an investment of time that will pay users dividends for many years.

They refer to Larry Lessig's definition of a what a commons is:

• The character of the resource. (A physical asset is consumed, a commons can be shared.)
  
• How the resource relates to a community.

Much of the work that I am doing in this blog and elsewhere can only be done due to the pristine nature of my copyright. My ability to write in open forums and speeches is unconstrained by publishers, academia, employer or any other group claiming ownership rights. This was a difficult exercise for me to complete, and I am not aware of any other industry that is so positioned. I can say and do what I need with the copyright as I please. No one paid for the information, I funded the research myself and therefore no one else has a say, and therefore this community can develop in a completely unconstrained manner in the best interests of its users, developers and the oil and gas producers.

One of the presenters, Ms. Nancy Kranich has published a pamphlet entitled "The Information Commons, A Public Policy Report" that is available here. This is a comprehensive review of the copyright law, information commons and particularly the Internet. It should be read and understood by all those that are active on the Internet. Additional time should be spent reviewing the links on that website for further information.

"The source and origin of copyright law is ingrained in the U.S. constitution. As Ms Kranich says; Two provisions of the U.S. Constitution are specifically directed toward serving this need for information that is so crucial to democracy. The Copyright Clause does so both by giving authors "the exclusive right" to profit by their writings "for limited times," and by providing that after the limited term of copyright expires, works enter the public domain, where they are freely available to all. The First Amendment prohibits government from abridging "the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Yes this is important, and the internet makes it all the more valuable and dangerous. If you scroll down to the bottom of each and every page of this blog you'll note that all these entries are copyrighted. I am extending the work that was done in 2004 to a broader audience, yet able to maintain the copyright by doing this. Therefore all the information contained within this blog is provided with free access, but the ability to prepare a derivative work is forbidden. The only license that will be provided will be to develop the code, and this will be strictly open source but the copyright remains with me and hence the code, but free access is provided. I have placed this notice on every entry of the blog.

"Until further notice visitors providing comments and information to this blog should assume that all information becomes the property of Paul D. Cox and its licensees. This blog represents a derivative work of the research concepts discovered in 2004. All rights revert to the copyright holder Paul D. Cox. This is consistent with the purposes of blogs as identified in google blogger '6.a content ownership'."

The point of this entry is to highlight that the blog comments and entries are copyrighted. The same opportunities exists today as a result of the power of computers, networks and commons principles for any other area of sciences or engineering. I encourage readers to determine their own futures in this new information age.

Dr. Giovanni Dosi, "Sources" Parts III, C.

[Innovation] (click on the title to get a summary of all of Dr. Giovanni Dosi's books in publication.)

What we learned from the first installment of this paper I think is significant. The scope and quality of Dosi's research is unparalleled in the field of innovation. His recognition in Europe, and particularly in Italy reflect the somewhat local nature of his work. However, Dr. Dosi is still very young and is highly involved in the community. I believe his work will be better known the world over as innovation becomes more of a competitive advantage.

C. Technology: Freely Available Information or Specific Knowledge

Dosi notes that a firms focus is placed on the capabilities of the firms. That a firm will apply incremental improvements based on the unique competitive advantages that they use to differentiate their products.

"What the firm can hope to do technologically in the future is narrowly constrained by what it has been capable of doing in the past."

Dosi goes on to identify a key analytical point in the difference between technology and information. Noting that information is a subset of technology. Stating that much of the tacit and specific knowledge regarding what a firm does can not be captured either as the firms proprietary data or publicly available knowledge. It is however mobile in the form of the competitive nature that may draw staff away from a producer, or in the form of copying or reverse engineering, which suggests that information travels quite quickly between firms.

From the point of view of this blog, we see that the oil and gas producers are not oriented culturally to a "sharing" mindset. One that this blog suggests as the key requirement of innovation and expansion of their internal capabilities, and hence production base. The focus is on building this internal capability that provides them with the competitive advantages they are then able to exploit. Clearly this is the manner in which they have been successful in the past.

Nonetheless the oil and gas industry has two anomalies they've never faced before.

• Substantially higher prices for their product.
• Greater difficulty in maintaining their production volumes, and most importantly, the production volume demands of the marketplace.
  

Clearly the elasticity of supply is not what was assumed to be true by economists.

This forms a paradox where the firms technology or information, which has traditionally proven adequate, is no longer capable of sustaining the organization or the market demand. (drawing on reserves faster, over the long term, eliminates the firm)

The paradox, contradiction or conflict is the source of the answer so say the great philosophers. Each producer is building their internal capabilities in isolation. This leads to augmenting the capability by increasing the personnel necessary to conduct the science and engineering. This situation is mirrored throughout the industry with extensive, yet relatively specific capabilities silo'd in each organization. As I noted in the Partnership entry here, the resources, specialization and capabilities of each member of the joint operating committee are not necessarily participating. In fact very little if any knowledge is shared.

I believe this cultural difficulty in sharing is the definition of the problem that the paradox identifies. Holding all of the capability as secret only leads to isolated events in which the science is moved. The collaborative environment in other scientific and academic communities recognizes the value of peer reviews and collaboration. Without them there would be no new discoveries.

But there is a bigger issue here. No one in oil and gas is necessarily able to lay claim to the discovery. If things are kept secret, then for the most part they will stay that way for a short period of time. Eventually being exposed to the rest of the industry the discoverer has no legal protection regarding the efforts that went into the discovery. Copyright law establishes a mechanism that allows the author to claim the discovery, but the idea has to be published to secure the copyright. The purpose of the copyright law is to permit society to build off the basis of the ideas of its citizens.

With the global economy quickly becoming an era of commercialization of intellectual property. It is intellectual property that provides the real tangible value that is necessary for any long term sustainable competitive advantage. This value is not being realized through the secretive means of these oil and gas organizations, and is not providing any value for the global economy because of constrained production volumes and high energy prices.

Dosi goes on to state:

"Once the cumulative and firm specific nature of technology is recognized, its development over time ceases to be random, but is constrained to zones closely related technologically and economically to existing activities." page 1131

leading to,

"Each technological paradigm entails a specific balance between exogenous determinants of innovation and determinants that are endogenous to the process of competition and technological accumulation of particular firm and industries. Moreover, each paradigm involves specific search modes, knowledge bases, and combinations between proprietary and public forms of technological knowledge." page 1131

This isolationism is leading to failure on an industry wide scale. When producers can not replace the production they've produced, that is a failure in the largest sense I can imagine. This industry needs to revisit the means of their capabilities on the basis of this information. Are their economic benefits derived from a hand full of employees, or the world wide oil and gas technology, engineering and scientific understandings.

I can not imagine what the world would look like if Dr. Giovanni Dosi kept his works secret.

In the next entry I will finish off section III with "D. How Organizations Build Knowledge Bases."

What is a joint operating committee?

[Definition] [Joint Operating Committee (JOC)]

An excellent question for those, and particularly the developers, with no first hand experience in oil and gas.

Traditionally the oil and gas industry has formed partnerships to mitigate the capital risk involved in the exploration and production business. These partnerships have also formed as a result of the scope of their facilities growing in terms of land and that land may have been leased by another producer. At which time in all cases, the producers adopt the joint operating committee as the method of management of the physical facility and appoint a Chairman as the operator.

After almost a century, the joint operating committee has become the defacto global organization that is responsible for the operations and control of the facilities. All the agreements and documents are executed between all parties, all financial operations from budgets to costs and capital are controlled by the joint operating committee. This forms the majority of the culture of the global oil and gas industry. And this culture is defined through various industry groups of accounting, land, geological and others that have defined the terminology, business rules etc.

During the 1940's and 1950's oil and gas operations were approaching the size that we all know and love them as today. These required different management and organizational structures to specifically deal with a more efficient manner of management. Hence the hierarchy was formed and grew to deal with the business oriented legal and finance issues associated with their share of the physical properties. Over the years the SEC, accounting boards, and Sarbane's Oxeley layered on more requirements and the joint operating committee became less and less the focus of the organization.

Today the focus of the organization is now more on the quarterly performance and the production volumes predictions of the CEO / CFO. The ability of an organization to focus on the operations requires a consensus between the partners represented through the joint operating committee. It is necessary to vote on the manner of, and approve each phase of the operations at every detail through the JOC and these are done more on an annual calendar or when the paper work gets done.

As you can imagine the confusion and conflicting orientation within the firm leads to more pressing needs and the SEC rules. The joint operating committee languishes with all the authority and power to make a difference, but stagnates due to the nature of the fire alarms at head office.

By moving the accountability of the hierarchy to the joint operating committee. Alignment with the legal, financial, cultural, and operational decision making frameworks eliminates the redundant nature of how oil and gas is currently managed. In addition the focus will fall on the production facilities and the opportunities to innovate.

The Genesys system will provide the collaborative environment for the earth scientists and engineers to innovate. These critical skills can also be sourced from the entire population of producers represented on the JOC and enable the firms to meet the markets demands.

How this move of the hierarchy is orchestrated is really the easy part. The SEC, government and other royalty holders, taxing authorities and Sarbane's Oxeley provide the same thing. Compliance is sought through the publication of business rules. And as most developers will tell you, business rules are the type of work that computers do very well. That is why they are published. As the larger population of engineers and scientists collaborate, discover and innovate, the Genesys system will follow along to provide the compliance through the systems business rules.

In a nutshell that is the joint operating committee and how it operates in the global oil and gas industry and the substance of the copyright that I hold. These research findings have been reflected upon by industry leaders as;

"Solving the largest administrative problem for the past fifty years."

or,

"A new discipline."

So join me here and start this revolutionary way of organizing oil and gas. If you have any questions or comments please post them here for all to benefit.

Ray Kurzweil on MIT video.

[Community]

This video provides a clear picture of our future and is entitled:

Innovation Everywhere How the Acceleration of GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics) Will Create a Flat and Equitable World

By Mr. Ray Kurzweil, who is also the author of the book "The Singularity is Near" the bestseller from 2005 that suggested the convergence of information technologies, genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are leading to substantially different lives. Among his many unique awards is his recognition and acceptance in the inventors hall of fame. A very entertaining video, one that I highly recommend.

In point form here are the highlights of his speech;

• Timing is a critical component of success in today's business environment. Noting that Google is in the right place at the right time.
  
• Mr. Ray Kurzweil has over time developed a number of mathematic models that he uses to support his discussion.
• His conclusions / findings.
  
• Technology evolves exponentially, non-linearly. However, people perceive technology linearly. This is an important point to remember as people assume the dot com meltdown is only resurfacing. What is happening now is exponentially larger then the run up to 2000.
  
• RNAi, (interference RNA) in 5 to 10 years, the benefits should provide longer and higher quality of lives.
• The paradigm shift rate is accelerating. The shift is achieving 100 years of progress in just the first 14 years of this century (2000 - 2014). We are also going to see 200 times the changes that occurred during the 20th century during this the 21st century.
  
• Certain technological trends are predictable and correct. Which wireless standard will become the predominate technology, can not be predicted, however, the impact that wireless will have is very predictable.
  
• Applying these attributes to economic principles and specifically to the US debt and GDP provides some interesting perspectives on how today's economic issues are not tomorrow's problems.
  
• Information technology will achieve emulation of the human brain in 2013.
  
• Exponential growth in the volume of information technologies used will offset the costs. The economy will be predominately based on information technologies in 2020.
  
• An intersection of technical disciplines of biology and information technology is happening.
  
• "Every form of communications technology is doubling its price-performance, bandwidth, capacity every 12 months." This fact alone supports so much of the underlying changes that we are seeing in these fast paced times. Advanced communication is what separates us from the other animals.
  
• IT will be the majority of GNP in 2020's.
• By 2010 computers will disappear and become ubiquitous.
  
• 2002 was the year in which the average age expectancy was 78. By 2017 we may have long life.
  

These comments provide a strong background for the challenges and times we face in oil and gas. The plurality thesis suggests that the engineering and earth science disciplines will change and advance at a rapid pace in the next 5 to 10 years. I stated that the corporate organization as represented by the hierarchy would be unable to keep up with these changes.

Mr. Kurzweil's presentation shows me that the days of the bureaucracy, of command and control of the corporate mechanisms are in their final days. Although they may appear to be as strong as ever, I would suggest that their capability to deal with their current problems is limited.

The theories represented in this blog are establishing the community that will eliminate the command and control hierarchy's. Now is the time to get involved, find somewhere in this community that you fit and start making the difference that you know you can. If you have organizational budgetary authorization, please do not hesitate to make a donation through this blog to secure the needs of this community.

Standards in a flat world.

A quotation that I find of value. From Thomas Friedman in his book "The world is flat".

"Standards don't eliminate innovation, they just allow you to focus it. They allow you to focus on where the real value lies, which is usually everything you can add above and around the standard." p. 76

Dr. Giovanni Dosi, "Sources" Parts I, II and III, A) & B)

[innovation] (Click on the title to link to Dr. Dosi's Curriculum Vitae)

Since this blog is about innovation in oil and gas, we should make it the most prominent topic of discussions. With that in mind, I want to expand on the works of Dr. Giovanni Dosi and continue with the research of his work that I started three years ago. I believe that his work has defined the process and methods of innovation in the most effective manner. Therefore, as time permits I will attempt to communicate many of his ideas and thoughts and apply them to the systems development this community is doing here in oil and gas.

Please note that the Plurality thesis contains a large section of these works applied to oil and gas. These can be sourced by selecting the February 2006 archive and selecting the entry for "Plurality Dr. Giovanni Dosi." Please also note that these research summaries are more to inform the reader on the research done, so that the reader may use these as tools in their day to day business and participation in these software developments.

Dosi, G. (1988). Sources, Procedures and Microeconomic Effects of Innovation. Journal of Economic Literature Volume XXVI: pp. 1120 - 1171

If you have access to some databases that hold proprietary data, I highly recommend downloading as much of Dosi's works as you can. This is the main starting point of where Dosi truly began to hit his stride. Recognition after this was a forgone conclusion.

Part I, Introduction

Starting his discussion Dosi dives in and speaks to the motivation that drives the innovative process within organizations. Noting that much of the motivation falls to that one intangible in business, that being a "belief" that the "existence of some sort of yet unexploited scientific and technical opportunities;" provide economic value in excess of its costs." page 1120

Setting out to establish some broad objectives, Dosi then points to the main aim of this work as;

2. "Identify the main characteristics of the innovation process."
3. "Identify the factors that are conducive or hinder the development of new processes of production and new products."
4. "Identify the processes that determine the selection of particular innovation and the effect on industrial structures." page 1121

Lofty objectives that set the stage for the scope of this seminal piece. If we were to identify the main characteristics, the factors that are conducive or hinder innovation, and thirdly, the processes that determine the selection of innovation and its impact on industrial structure we begin to see the value that Dosi's work has the potential of achieving.

Dosi defines two key issues that also provide evidence of the scope of this document and help to define it as a landmark piece. The issues are;

2. "The characterization, in general, of the innovative process."
3. "The interpretation of the factors that account for observed differences in the modes of innovative search and the rates of innovation between different sectors and firms, and over time." page 1121

Dosi has therefore framed the scope of his research and clearly undertaken a large project.

Within the context of what would make an innovative producer, Dosi identifies two main characteristics of an innovative company.

• (a) "capabilities and stimuli generated within each firm and within industries"
• (b) "broader causes external to the individual industries, such as the state of science in different branches; the facilities for the communication of knowledge; the supply of technical capabilities, skills, engineers, and so on; the conditions controlling occupational and geographical mobility and / or consumer;" and many more.

The perspective of the global oil and gas industry is the focus of this blog and hence this research. In applying and learning from Dosi we need to realize the scope of the academic pursuits within the sciences and social sciences of oil and gas. A key part of the thesis asked where the sciences of physics, geology, geophysics and engineering were heading in the next 5 to 10 years. When we include many of the social sciences involved in business and economics, I feel the importance of Dr. Dosi's work should be foremost in the minds of most of the individuals employed in oil and gas. This also provides for the remarkable opportunity to discover virgin research territory in the areas of these sciences and innovations application.

I also want to reiterate that the context of this blog is to alter the fundamental organizational structure of an oil and gas concern away from the hierarchy towards the joint operating committee. The purpose of this blog is to define the systems that define the organizational structure. With out the new systems developed here, no change in the organizational process can be made and producers innovative efforts remain constrained and difficult.

Part II, Searching for innovations - The general patterns.

Dosi establishes through various statistics the breakdown of the various expenditures incurred in research, applied research and development. These statistics are also broken down between the government, industry, academic research and non-profit institutions.

Nothing of interest jumps out of these statistics other then the annual expenditures seem to be fairly constant over time. They also appear to be sizeably influenced by the American military and space programs. As these two engines of research make a clear demarcation from what the U.S. spends in comparison to other countries.

The consistency of the expenditures from year to year seem to reflect that the amount of research and development spending is constrained by the quality and quantity of the research industry. i.e. spending more money does not necessarily increase the benefits of research and development.

Dosi goes on to note that there are undocumented expenditures incurred in the innovative process of "learning by doing, and learning by using". These are not quantifiable or measurable as they are incurred as required and may be directly associated with the culture of the country and the value assigned to research by the country of origin.

The time frame of this research was 1988 and much has changed since that time. I would particularly assert the value of the Java programming language and the Internet. These two technologies provide a new means of learning by doing and learning by using. Based on the premise of code re-usability, an infrastructure of high quality code has become available through the Internet's revolutionary open source movement. These infrastructures are threatening the large software companies such as Oracle, Microsoft and SAP.

Raising this point and classifying this as a new method of learning by leveraging the works of others, particularly in the java programming language. In a manner of minutes I can download and install state of the art servers, IDE's and frameworks at no cost. The impact of this will begin to bear fruit in all industries as these systems are organized for superior competitive advantages. Leveraging off of the base of Java frameworks that exist today and being planned for tomorrow make most of what Dr. Giovanni Dosi suggests, especially in concert with the Genesys system we are building here, very possible and very real. The missing ingredient is the ability to collaborate and communicate effectively, a.k.a. a system issue.

Part III, Innovation, the Characteristics of the Search Process.

Dosi identifies many of the common characteristics of innovation and notes the critical importance of the economics of technological changes.

A. Innovation as Problem Solving: Technological Paradigms.

Solving problems is the root cause of innovation. This is inherent in most peoples understanding, but Dosi identifies and quantifies the difficulty in moving to an innovative mind-set in the following.

"In other words, an innovative solution to a certain problem involves discovery and creation since no general algorithm can be derived from the information about the problem that generates its solution automatically." page 1126

Or in other words, innovation is not as easy as it appears. Dosi continues,

"Certainly the solution of technological problems involves the use of information drawn from previous experience and formal knowledge, (example, from the natural sciences) however, it also involves specific and un-codified capabilities on the part of inventors." page 1126

Dosi notes the difficulties and complexity of the innovation process and the tie in to the scientific, mathematic and academic pursuits. Drawing on the tacit knowledge of many participants, these collaborations have the effect of releasing the creative process of innovating. The point that I think Dosi is attempting to make here is that this stuff called innovation, no matter what or how you slice it, is not easy. Discovery is a process that takes effort. It is the scope of the effort necessary in the oil and gas industry that the hierarchy is unable to exercise to make these or any discoveries.

The other point that Dosi makes is that when the underlying sciences or engineering paradigms change it has the effect where it can become a major point of innovation, however as noted in the prior paragraph, that innovation will take substantial tacit and explicit knowledge and effort.

B. Technological Paradigms and Patterns of Innovation: Technical Trajectories.

Dosi states

"A crucial implication of the general paradigmatic form of technological knowledge is that innovative activities are strongly selective, finalized in quite precise directions, cumulative in the acquisition of problem-solving capabilities... Let us define as a technological trajectory the activity of technological process along the economic and technological trade-offs defined by a paradigm." page 1128

It could be argued that the discovery of new sources of energy has been constrained by the very low cost of fossil fuels. The opportunity to discover "better" sources of energy to power the world will have to wait until the financial resources and focus is on commercial levels of cost recovery of those technologies. This would apply equally to the pursuit of exploration in remote areas, deeper wells, bypass gas and other methods and sources of energy.

Dosi suggests these economic / technical tradeoffs affect the trajectories of innovation and are influenced by prices that move the trajectory upward. Clearly the fossil fuel prices are reallocating the financial resources to facilitate innovation and an upwards movements in the economic / technical trajectories.

The final point that Dosi notes in this section is that the innovations are sometimes sourced from differences in the underlying technologies. A good analogy for describing this would be when an assumption is altered, then the conclusion is also altered. The underlying technological cost or performance has a direct influence on the performance trajectory of the items being studied and therefore, are a ripe field for innovation.

Technorati Tags: Dosi

Technical decision.

[Technology] [Decision]

Based on my research and understanding, I am now able to define the technical architecture a little finer. This entry will summarize the architecture to date and define the current changes.

I am eliminating the use of two "technologies" or "methods" of programming from all of the code that will be written. I am also including the limited use of one "non-typed" scripting language.

• Based on the technical vision of this blog and a brief discussion noted here, I am eliminating any and all use of "BPEL" or business process execution language, defined here.
  
• The use of AJAX "Asynchronous Javascript with XML, will also be eliminated.
  

I see these two technologies as stop gap measures that solve today's problems, only to open a pandora's box of issues down the road. In there place Java Applets will be used for the management of asynchronous messaging. Our ability to control the virtual machine on the clients browser provides a more robust system capability at the expense of higher development costs.

The value proposition of the Genesys system essentially allocates these development costs to each barrel of oil equivalent produced. The oil and gas industry is on the verge of breaching $3 trillion in annual revenues. Costs of development will not be an issue, however, system performance and reliability will.

The use of complementary technologies is permissible on the following basis.

• The Groovy scripting language is a derivative of the Java language. (JSR-241) It can be used in limited testing and other uses, however, never on production builds. Essentially allowing the developer to demonstrate new concepts, or, proof of concepts in a more robust and effective manner. Since groovy uses the same frameworks of the Java language, this provides an effective interim initial step for the developer to implement the code in essentially Java and provide value for the final development.
  

Therefore in summary, the technical decisions that have been made to date are as follows.

• Hosting via the Sun Grid. (Reliability, security and data security.)
• Solaris.
• Apache Maven.
  
• Java 5.0 moving to Mustang when reasonable. (Annotations and Generics are essential.)
• Ingres relational database. (Oracle's promotion of BPEL is disconcerting.)
• Sun Microsystems GlassFish Java EE 5.0.
• Sun Microsystems Web Server.
• Preference towards Netbeans, Java Studio Creator, Java Studio Enterprise.
  
• BPEL and AJAX are banned.
• Groovy as a scripting language is excluded from production code.
  

This is the current status of the technical decisions made to date.

Decisions being made in the short term are;

• Toplink vs. Hibernate. (Oracle's Toplink is included in GlassFish.)
• Evaluation of BEA.
• Licensing use and conflicts.
  

I would solicit opinions and comments regarding the decisions made and the future decisions to be made from readers.

System security, continued

The heading of this post will lead you to a tutorial paper on Elliptical Curve Cryptography. The document discusses the issues regarding encryption of data. As time passes the value of traditional encryption methods becomes less and less secure. The solution would be to expand the key size to enforce higher levels of security, however, that appears to be providing a solution for only 20 years after the larger bit length becomes standard.

ECC provides the user with progressively steeper levels of security with much smaller keys. As opposed to 2048 bit keys, ECC can provide the same level of security as RSA, with only a 248 bit key. Providing the following advantages:

"This means, in turn, less heat, less power consumption, less real estate consumed on the printed circuit board, and software applications that run more rapidly and make lower memory demands. Leading in turn to more portable devices which run longer, and produce less heat."

Why is this mentioned? Sun Microsystems have incorporated ECC into the next version of thier web server. Therefore, ECC will be the standard method of encryption of all data elements of the Genesys system.