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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
This article outlines the basic corporate engineering process that leads to the commercialization of a knowledge engineering concept, or software process. The development of a commercial product and enterprise from a technology-driven research effort or idea is quite similar to the process of continual refinement and hard work demanded by the scientific method, so the fundamentals of corporate and product development should not appear foreign to academics or those involved in corporate research. Knowledge engineering and related disciplines are on the verge of significant commercial product development efforts. The process of commercialization of ideas, particularly those derived from academic and research environments may not be intuitively obvious to the KE professional. The author outlines the general process of commercializing KE products and describes the three primary functional activities required to undertake a successful technology-driven commercial enterprise—market and customer definition, the development of the product prototype and corporate infrastructure, and capitalization.
1 He was, for example, the first consultant to Lotus Development Corporation in DBMS and AI product development, including product review, merger and acquisition analysis. He and Mitch Kapor, Founder and former Chairman and CEO of Lotus, developed the original Lotus strategy in dealing with corporate MIS departments and information systems, products, and services.
2 Formerly Cullinane Data Base Systems, Inc., a leading IBM mainframe DBMS vendor.
3 The moral of the Lotus–Cullinet story is that there is no substitute for superb timing, not in terms of management, capital, or product.
4 The author is indebted to David McElfresh, former founding Vice President of Product Development of Lotus Development Corporation for this compact but elegant thought on software engineering development efforts.
5 The exceptions to this observation are those companies funded by venture capitalists in early-stage or “seed” capital phases of development that result in immediate loss of management control and, by the second round of financing, a loss of majority equity interest in the enterprise.
6 However, and as we shall discuss further on, undercapitalization ultimately results in corporate failure.
7 Colour graphics, windowing, multi-sessioning, context help facilities and other sophisticated components of user-interfaces contribute significantly to the appeal of the commercial prototype. Investors and potential customers are significantly influenced by such functionality beause they are visually oriented with respect to a new product until the functionality is familiar.
8 The long-term contribution to corporate overhead of research and development activities, even in the most technology-driven enterprise, is usually about 10–15% of sales, while marketing and sales expenses can exceed 50%.