Innovation and Design Process Ontology

Abstract

Many domain-specific ontologies exist. These ontologies are used in text mining processes to better understand text that is available within the specific domain. Example domains include specific business areas such as marketing or functional areas such as particular types of operations within the intelligence community. This paper makes a step toward developing a broad ontology for the innovation and design process as a domain. Such an ontology can be used to better understand the discussion that takes places in the design and development of new innovations and can be used to better understand the influences on that development. In many cases, the success, failure, or final path of a new innovation may not rest upon its technical merits but on the non-technical influences during the design and development process such as political influences. This paper uses examples within the shipbuilding domain in order to take steps toward building an Innovation and Design Process Ontology that can be applied to the Forecasting Innovation Pathways (FIP) framework as a means of capturing and understanding the influences on the technology delivery system.