A Process for Innovation in a Collaborative Network

The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science is transforming global society. Technological convergence is beginning to define the way societies themselves interact, the way science is done, and the way the global marketplace is organised. In the middle of 2006, Petrobras, a Brazilian oil company, established a pioneering, multi-disciplinary team of senior academics and end-users working in partnership to identify potential opportunities and benefits surrounding this convergence of technology. The goal of this paper is to present the methodology adopted by Petrobras — an e-science collaborative project fostering the generation of ideas for new opportunities identified in areas of converging technology. The Petrobras effort is based on contributions by a group of 50 senior scientists from the top five Brazilian research institutes working iteratively via the Web. This convergence analysis is based on developments in text mining, and involves processing the abstracts of the selected papers to start fruitful discussions and to analyse comments in the knowledge fusion activity. It is completely integrated into a collaborative network environment. Results from one of these convergence cycles are discussed.