Company
Profile: Evolving Logic
Decision-making
has become a universal challenge for managers, entrepreneurs,
technologists, and investors in the high tech industry,
as it confronts one of its most tumultuous and unpredictable
eras. Evolving
Logic hopes it can leverage the timing of this uncertain
climate through its star product, computer-assisted reasoning
(CAR) software--that transcends the flaws
of traditional analytical processes, and assists companies
to prepare not just for select outcomes, but for any shape
the unseen future might take.
During
Larta's panel
discussion on digital cinema last month, each of the
speakers debated the problems and solutions involved in
implementing a widespread digital theatrical distribution
system. As this technology brings promise and threat to
the existing industry, every business sector involved--film
studios, technology providers, post production companies,
theater owners--are caught in a sea of conflicting forecasts
as to how it will all pan out. Attending the panel session
was one of the founders of Evolving
Logic, Robert Lempert, who recognized that the D-Cinema
challenge being debated that evening is exactly the kind
of business dilemma the company is trying to resolve. Evolving
Logic does not have any silver bullet to resolve the complex
problems of digital film distribution to cineplexes. But
it does have software that takes traditional strategic planning
to a more developed level than the best management team
could possibly achieve on its own.
"When
you're thinking of digital technologies in media and entertainment,
you're talking about a paradigm-shifting technology, a situation
where all the bets are off," says Steven Popper, the
company's Chief Operating Officer. "What's happening
in the absence of actual information is that each of these
groups are making certain assumptions. So you get into big
arguments that factor into the decision, where what you're
arguing over is 'which set of assumptions is most likely',
and then it becomes impossible to choose between them."
The
idea for the technology and the company came to Popper and
his cofounders, President Robert Lempert and Director of
Technology Development Steve Bankes, while working together
at RAND, where their business focus was in advanced analytical
techniques to resolve problems for clients. It was then,
Popper says, they became aware of a problem--these type
of advanced analytical tools were available, but were not
being utilized to the fullest potential to help design challenging
strategies in an unpredictable business climate.
"There
is an amazing body of human accomplishment and intellectual
artifacts, tools that have been designed to help people
reason and analyze facts and go through deductive, logical
processes," Popper says. "But very few tools to
help how human beings reason out of these conditions of
deep uncertainty. So we talked about what could be done
and realized that building tools was the key to the job.
We didn't want to talk about theory; we wanted to build
tools."
Human
decision processes can only comprehend and base decisions
upon a very limited set of possible outcomes, and, as with
digital cinema, just because investment and planning is
directed at those sets of possibilities, it doesn't mean
that those are the best choices. No matter how educated
a guess a company is making, it is still at a disadvantage
by being a bet waged on a limited, if not singular, outcome.
What the CAR technology does is identify all possible
scenarios and strategies across all the playing fields.
Then it selects multiple strategies that seem best, based
upon the widest range of alternative outcomes.
"This
allows people to operate in a regime of disruptive, revolutionary
technology (like digital media distribution) with some sort
of navigational tools," says Popper. "The problem
with new technology introduction is it's like operating
a speedboat in the fog, and you need a way of looking forward
and to understand what it is you might be confronting."
One of Evolving Logic's projects with the CAR software was
with the Ford Motor Company. Ford used the technology to
assist in its manufacturing strategy for a vast fleet of
vehicles so they would be in accordance to current and possible
future CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards,
which pertains to the miles per gallon a car burns. What
the standards would be was dependent upon very unpredictable
factors (fluctuating gas prices, political climate), and
Ford had the disadvantage of having hundreds of technologies
which it could invest in that would provide better fuel
economy.
"So
what we did is build a software system for them, CARAFE
(Computer Assisted Reasoning Application for Fuel Economy),"
Popper says. "This allowed them to put together a wide
number of different technology programs to examine them
across tens of thousands of alternative futures, to weigh
which serve their needs best, and assist them in their future
efforts."
Evolving Logic's own long-term business strategy is not
based on simply building upon its current activity, which
is customized software, but in creating software that can
be sold in mass, tailored to industry sectors as opposed
to individual clients. Yet the company is aware that in
a time of great apprehension amongst business leaders, selling
any application that can take over decision-making control
is an ambitious challenge, although one that is exciting
for them.
"There
are all kinds of ways of thinking that we've been taught
since an early age that make it difficult to accept that
there's a completely different way of thinking with computers.
What we're doing is going back to the fundamental rules
of computer science. Now that we have such powerful computers
and that we now have memory and storage no longer being
issues, how does this change computer assisted reasoning?
Our product is ultimately an attempt to bring about a paradigm
shift, and that's not necessarily a comfortable place to
be in as a small business."
by
Wendy Hall
Larta Staff Writer
