Systematic acceleration of radical discovery and innovation in science and technology

A systematic two-component approach (front-end component, back-end component) to bridging unconnected disciplines and accelerating potentially radical discovery and innovation (based wholly or partially on text mining procedures) is presented. The front-end component has similar objectives to those in the classical literature-based discovery (LBD) approach, although it is different mechanistically and operationally. The front-end component will systematically identify technical disciplines (and their associated leading experts) that are directly or indirectly-related to solving technical problems of high interest. The back-end component is actually a family of back-end techniques, only one of which shares the strictly literature-based analysis of the classical LBD approach. The non-LBD back-end techniques (literature-assisted discovery) make use of the human experts associated with the disparate literatures (disciplines) uncovered in the front-end to generate radical discovery and innovation. Specifically, in the literature-assisted discovery operational mode, these disparate discipline experts could be used as: 1. Recipients of solicitation announcements (BAA, SBIR, MURI, journal Special Issue calls for papers, etc.), 2. Participants in Workshops, Advisory Panels, Review Panels, Roadmaps, and War Games, 3. Points of Contact for Field Science Advisors, Foreign Field Offices, Program Officer site visits, and potential transitions. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.