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At its core, Kyield (www.kyield.com) offers a knowledge management system that accommodates multiple file types from fully structured (spreadsheets, databases) to fully unstructured (video and audio files). When customers set up the Kyield platform, they incorporate information about their organization on all levels—enterprise wide, departmental, teams, and individuals. Kyield then uses this organizational information to provide semantic context for the imported content, and also to provide ratings for that content.

In addition, the Kyield platform uses other information in the organization as well as user-entered metadata to build descriptive wrappers for the content, essentially fleshing out the semantic context for all the information in the system. This semantic context enables predictive capabilities that customers can use to prevent crises, improve productivity, and increase innovation in the organization.

Kyield also includes an incentive and accountability capability that on the one hand, encourages knowledge workers in the organization to properly input and metadata tag content, and on the other hand, ensures the content is complete and accurate. This “carrot and stick” approach is fully configurable, so that each customer can decide what system of rewards and consequences make sense for their particular culture.

The ZapThink Take

Kyield’s offering essentially consists of a body of intellectual property rather than a specific product. Their go-to-market strategy is largely partner-based, both via OEM and solution provider channels. The OEM strategy is perhaps their best option at this point, because their offering is too nebulous and flexible for many enterprise customers to understand sufficiently. Success would then depend upon convincing key vendor partners to incorporate their technology.

Supporting the solution provider channel is also a viable alternative, because purpose-built solutions that leverage the Kyield platform have the potential to offer well-defined value propositions for particular industries. Without the support of the OEM or solution provider channels, however, Kyield will likely run into challenges defining a clear product strategy with a value proposition that enterprise customers will understand.

Kyield: Startup Potential (1 – 5 light bulbs)
Game-Changing Potential Combining semantics, predictive intelligence, and incentives has the potential to redefine the role of semantics in the enterprise.	Partner & Exit Potential Once one major vendor OEMs Kyield’s technology, then other major vendors will want it.
CIO Appeal Kyield’s value proposition is too nebulous for most CIOs to fully grasp.	Reality Check Kyield has many key components of a successful business model, but they need to put them together into a winning product strategy.

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AccelGolf (www.accelgolf.com) offers a mobile device application and platform for golfers that acts as a handheld scorecard, golf course database, and back-end data collection and intelligence engine. Customers use the application to track all the minutiae of their games, including types of shots, performance on particular holes, and club usage. The application offers data on thousands of golf courses, and AccelGolf’s customers fanatically update and extend the data about the courses using their GPS technology as they golf. On the back end, AccelGolf collects all the data their customers input, creating a massive resource that tracks information on players, equipment, and courses over time.

Perhaps the most innovative part of the AccelGolf offering is the crowdsourcing capability: how customers use the AccelGolf platform to both create and curate the data that AccelGolf manages on behalf of all customers. The more customers contribute, the more valuable the tool is for the customers, and the higher the barrier to entry becomes for any competitor. Furthermore, these data create the possibility of alternate revenue streams, for example, by enabling club manufacturers and course managers to advertise on the platform.

The ZapThink Take

From a business perspective, the golfing demographic is a double win for AccelGolf: not only does it skew upscale, increasing the valuation potential of the company, but the audience is also fanatical about their own game data. Because the value of the information depends upon its quality, if the audience were likely to be less than honest about the data they enter, then the entire AccelGolf value proposition would be weakened. But with the golfing demographic, players are unlikely to exaggerate individual scores (although deleting an occasional poor game would be “par for the course,” as it were, and AccelGolf will have to adjust for that).

Among the lessons other companies may learn from AccelGolf is their novel use of GPS technology. Now that a critical mass of mobile devices have this technology, putting it to good use is a significant innovation driver. The misconception that the GPS function in mobile handsets is only for streaming local ads to consumers is now passe, but the market is still deficient on innovative uses of this technology. AccelGolf has combined GPS with other capabilities in a novel way that can foster similar innovation in different business contexts.

AccelGolf: Startup Potential (1 – 5 light bulbs)
Game-Changing Potential Once AccelGolf proves its model with the golfing app, there is good potential to expand to other sports and beyond.	Partner & Exit Potential The golfing demographic is so lucrative that acquirers will likely fight over AccelGolf, leading to a bidding war and an unusally rapid exit.
Innovation Leadership Combining GPS capabilities, crowdsourcing, and massive data collection is a combination applicable in many arenas.	Reality Check Fanatic customers, upscale demographic, innovative, cool product: what’s not to love? Now it’s all about execution.

Baydin (www.baydin.com) targets the information overload problem so prevalent in organizations today by helping individuals manage the information in their email inboxes and on their corporate portals.

Download at Baydin-ZapTake-042010-ZTZT-06-1.

For developers and other technical specialists, the burden of change is doubly difficult, because these people must adjust to the new technical as well as organizational realities of SOA. Often, the best approach an enterprise architect can take to build acceptance for SOA among the technical staff is to work one-on-one with technology specialists to educate them on the details of SOA, while simultaneously building acceptance for the architecture at the highest levels.