Invention Machine Puts Sustainable Innovation in Sight

Goldfire 5.5 upgrade and Insight release opens up the innovation platform to a broader audience

Beth Stackpole, contributing editor -- Design News, September 22, 2009

With innovation a priority for companies, even amidst a global recession, Invention Machine is making its Goldfire platform accessible to a wider audience while adding new capabilities that make it easier to find and transform critical information into actionable knowledge.

The goal of the Goldfire 5.5 upgrade and Insight, which is the latest member of the Invention Machine innovation tool family, is to create what the company dubs an "Innovation Intelligence Ecosystem." This ecosystem, Invention Machine officials say, will equip companies with a toolset and methodology for making innovation a sustainable process, which in turn will promote more effective product development and business decisions and increase corporate productivity. "Innovation remains a critical priority for organizations thanks to the exodus of knowledge workers due to retirement or layoffs," says Jeff Boehm, Invention Machine's vice president of marketing and strategy. "What we're seeing and hearing from customers is that knowledge is critical for innovation. And in order to make innovation a sustainable and repeatable process, they need sustainable access to knowledge."

Three new capabilities in the Goldfire 5.5 release are designed to do just that. The upgrade's new question and answer technology delivers enhanced semantic capabilities making the research process easier and more effective, Boehm explains. Say, for example, an engineer was researching the cause of a particular seal failure. Instead of just returning documents that have precise answers to the question buried within, Goldfire 5.5 returns the appropriate documents, but also highlights the specific answers, greatly simplifying the search process.

The new Knowledge Navigator function fosters innovation collaboration by reconstructing a user's past thinking and research process. Rather than delivering a list of results, the technology classifies the research and documents related to the subject area, helping users navigate the search results more effectively. "This capability guides users and leads them down new research paths that they may not have directly asked about," Boehm says. "It improves research activity and makes it even easier to find new ideas." The third major new capability in Goldfire 5.5 is the Research Guide, essentially a road map of past searches, which make it easier for users to collaborate and share their thinking process with peers.

Accompanying the Goldfire 5.5 release is Insight, a new addition to the Invention Machine product line. While Goldfire is aimed at "master innovators" working on disruptive innovations, this new release supports a wide range of users working on everyday innovation challenges. Unlike Goldfire 5.5 which includes function modeling, process modeling, system modification and trend analysis for product development, Goldfire Insight focuses on problem analysis and research work for a broad community of users, not just engineers and scientists.

Invention Machine Goldfire 5.5’s research guide accurately and visually reconstructs an innovator’s past thinking and research process.