BizEd

JanFeb2008

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NewSeminarAd.qxd 11/21/07 11:16 AM Page 1 Register today for one of these seminars coming to a campus near you! When business school deans, faculty, and staff need targeted, hands-on training from industry experts, they turn to AACSB International. Each year, we offer more than 40 seminars worldwide created exclusively for management education professionals. Whether you want to strengthen a specific skill, turn your advisory council into a strategic asset, or successfully navigate the accreditation process, we have a seminar that will help! AACSB Bridge Program May 4–9, 2008 Babson College Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA —---——— Advisory Council Seminar March 13-14, 2008 Elkin B. McCallum Graduate School of Business, Bentley College Waltham, Massachusetts, USA —---——— Assessment Seminar March 18-19, 2008 The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Asia Campus, Singapore Business Accreditation Seminar March 10-11, 2008 National Chengchi University Chinese Taipei —---——— Teaching Business Ethics Seminars March 28-29, 2008 HEC School of Management Paris, France (Versailles) —— May 19-20, 2008 - College of Commerce DePaul University Chicago, Illinois, USA Please visit www.aacsb.edu for the latest information. management model: who, what, when, where, how, which, and why. By tagging each piece of informa- tion with as many of the seven W's as possible, a company can better separate good information from bad. "It's my model of provenance for information," says Ram. "Now that we're in the information age, we need the ability to track infor- mation's history to make sure we know where it came from." Using her model, Ram wants to design a technological system that not only stores data, but weights its reliability. With such a system in place, companies can improve their "semantic interoperability"—an established concept that refers to how well a company can access and use its information—in three pri- mary ways. First, they can know the origins of each informational object. Second, they can judge the qual- ity of the data with accuracy. And, finally and most important, they can put that information to use. Right now, Ram is working with Raytheon Missile Systems, headquartered in Arizona, to help it shorten its R&D cycle. For instance, when the company designs a new missile and some- thing goes wrong in a test, it is working with Ram to find ways to track information about what materials were used, what tests were previously done, and who was involved. Through such tracking, Ram explains, Raytheon hopes to go from concept to completion of new missile designs much more quickly. In addition, she is working with Wikipedia to track vandalism to entries on its site. As a rule, chang- es made by identified users tend to be more accurate than changes made by anonymous users. Ram says that by tracking changes back to users' IP addresses, the W-7 model can detect—and in some cases even predict—vandalism to the site. She foresees a time when Wikipedia can use the W-7 model to give each of its entries a "reli- ability rating," so that users have a better idea of how much credence to give the information. Ram sees applications for the W-7 model in many venues—to help governments track intelli- gence on terrorism, for example. As she has conducted her research, Ram says she has been surprised at how many of the seven W's many companies already have recorded. They simply have no means to uti- lize them. "I hope that more businesses will invest in the effort required to track this information, because over time it can become a very rich source of knowledge," says Ram. Once organizations have control over their information, she adds, "they'll be able to use it in ways they never anticipated." BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 49 —-— — -- —

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