National Science Foundation
Small Business Innovation Research Program Office - Room 590
Division of Design, Manufacture, and Industrial Innovation, Directorate of Engineering
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22230


DEC 4, 1999


Mr. Rod Welch
Welch Company
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111

Dear Mr. Welch:

Subject:   SBIR/STTR Phase I Proposal 9961176

We regret to inform you that the National Science Foundation is unable to support your proposal entitled, "System of Metrics for Business Communications."

In accordance with NSF policy, we are enclosing with this letter the verbatim copies of the review received for your proposal. We hope that these reviews will be useful to you in planning your future research activities. The final award decision is based on reviews by scientists and/or engineers knowledgeable about the pertinent research topic and on consideration of other factors, such as funds available, possible duplication of other research, and NSF program balance.

Inquiries concerning your proposal should be made to, Dr. Sara Nerlove, SBIR Program Manager, by mail or by telephone, (703) 306-1395, Ext. 5247 after December 12, 1999.

Even though we are unable to support this proposal, we would be pleased to consider other Phase I proposals that you might wish to submit.

Sincerely,


Louis A. Martin-Vega
Division Director


Enclosures




National NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Arlington, Virginia 22230

Division of Design, Manufacture and
Industrial Innovation

General Infonnation for Applicants
TECHNICAL REVIEW PROCESS-1999 PHASE I SBIR/STrR PROPOSALS


The National Science Foundation received 1423 Phase I proposals in response to the 1999 SBIR/STTR Solicitation tNSF 99-57) of which NSF plans to make about 200 Phase I Awards. Approximately two percent of the proposals were eliminated from the review process because they were either withdrawn or failed to meet the Solicitation requirements.

Verbatim copies of all completed technical reviews are enclosed. A panel summary is also provided if a panel was convened. In reading the reviews, please keep in mind that all reviewers are addressing their comments primarily to the NSF as advisory input to the decision process. Some reviewers provide detailed references for their remarks and give specific suggestions for improvements; others do not. In some cases, NSF must consider comments by a reviewer in the context of other reviews by the same person.

A mail or panel review or a combination of both conducts reviews. NSF may consider factors other than the reviewers' comments and ratings in making its decisions. These factors may include the availability of funding, the fields of emphasis stated in the solicitation, and distribution among fields and regions. General NSF policies are also important decision factors.

The SBIR/S1lR program managers also examined all recommendations by the topic program officers before finalizing the SBIR/STTR program recommendations.- In general, proposals ranked highest by the topic program officers on the-basis of merit review are given precedence in the SBIR/SUR award process. A number of proposals,~although meritorious, could not be funded for lack of funds. Proposals recommended for award were further examined by the SBIR/STTR program staff for other factors, including possible duplication of other research, potential commercial application, past performance in commercializing SBIR/STTR results, and NSF program emphasis and balance.

For additional information about NSF and to obtain publications, we invite you to visit the NSF web site: o visit the NSF web site: >o visit the NSF web site: http://www.nsf.qov. You may also e-mail, pubs@nsf.nov, or call (703) 306-1130.




PANEL SUMMARY


Proposal Number:
PI Name:
Company Name:

Panel # and Name:
Panel Date:

99- 61176
Welch
The Welch Company

OOSBlIT-19 Intelligent Systems September 22, 1999

SUMMARY:

State the proposal's aim; comment on the proposal's strengths, weaknesses and commercial potential as discussed by the panel; and, suggest improvements for the research plan and or proposal preparation.

The researcher proposes to create an internet search capability that allows users to assign multiple subjects to chunks of information and to chain information by time. The claim is that this would facilitate information retrieval. While the researcher addresses the need for this in very general claims, there is no systematic argument for this need.

The researcher proposes to interview computer scientists as well as others in knowledge classification and formulate this into a phase two plan. While this is work that needs to be done, it would make a stronger proposal to have completed this prior to submitting the SBIR proposal.

This is an ambitious goal but the argument for the need should be more clearly articulated and the proposal needs a clearly formulated research plan.







PROPOSAL NO.: 9961176 INSTITUTION: Welch Company NSF PROGRAM: SMALL BUSINESS PHASE I PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Welch, Rod TITLE: SBIR Phase I: System of Metrics for Business Communications RATING: Poor

REVIEW:

Please rate each of the individual criteria listed below as Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, or Poor and provide comments to reflect your rating.

Criterion l.

What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity? This criterion addresses the overall quality of the proposed activity to advance science and engineering through research and education.

Criterion 2.

What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity? This criterion addresses the overall impact of the proposed activity.

LEAD REVIEW, PROPOSAL 9961176

SYSTEM OF METRICS FOR BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS

Intellectual Merit.
The proposal references a critical information management need-essentially, organizing time and information through software that supports intelligent, shared linkages. It does so without defining in any systematic way the nature of that need, and without addressing except in the most general terms the research and development effort required to respond to the need.

The current proposal requests funding for a Phase I effort to support interviewing of 'computer scientists and practitioners' as well as 'cognitive scientists, librarians and others who work in knowledge classification' to develop a plan then to be implemented in Phase II (for which funding is not requested here). This effort would embrace development of the methodology for tagging records accessible through the Internet so as to enable retrieval of related information and chronologies; of principles and practices of what could be called adaptive indexing; and ultimately of processes for applying the results of this research in practical communication.

Beyond these very general objectives, the proposal presents no real plan either for analyzing the knowledge management dilemma it identifies or for developing technologies and methods to respond to that dilemma. In particular, it shows little awareness of research and practice in the


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several fields the proposal touches, including computational linguistics, search and retrieval systems, Bayesian belief networks, clustering algorithms, other neural network technologies, etc.

The principal investigator obviously has an inquiring mind, and he is aware of issues in knowledge management. But he does not show evidence of having the intellectual and experiential tools required to approach those issues with anything like sufficient polish or rigor. His reach exceeds his grasp.

Broader impacts.

It's difficult to address broader impacts of this proposed activity because it is incompletely presented in the proposal itself. I can imagine that a highly functional system of the kind hinted at in the proposal could make a substantial contribution to knowledge management and, in a period when that phrase is increasingly popular in data mining systems, electronic commerce, and similar applications areas, that it could offer commercial value. But there is no evidence that what is proposed here would be a highly functional system.

Rating and summary.

Nice idea, very naively proposed, without sufficient grounding in preceding research and development, and consequently lacking in clarity about process and outcomes.

Rating: Poor.


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PROPOSAL NO.: 9961176 INSTITUTION: Welch Company NSF PROGRAM: SMALL BUSINESS PHASE I PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Welch, Rod TITLE: SBIR Phase I: System of Metrics for Business Communications RATING: Poor

REVIEW:

Please rate each of the individual criteria listed below as Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, or Poor and provide comments to reflect your rating.

Criterion 1.

What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity? This criterion addresses the overall quality of the proposed activity to advance science and engineering through research and education.

Criterion 2.

What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity? This criterion addresses the overall impact of the proposed activity.

  1. Search capability.

    Changes over time by content - want to show causation. Builds on a schedule Diary built by the PI. User inputs reports - info divided into segments by time. Sounds as if information can be assembled into different subjects. Claims that SDS can help users retrieve information quickly but details on this are lacking. I think the core of this proposal is a tool to help people build and apply their own subject indexes.

    PI states that this can be merged into internet. Sounds as if he envisions bookmarking into SDS record (but of course the URLs will change over time).

    PI states that indexing rules and processes will be created. This is on internet and users can customize these over time.

    Basic funding is for interviewing users and writing some code.

    The proposal lacks a clearly communicated focus and justification.

  2. Impact -

    Retrieval from experience is certainly desirable. However, in this system what the user can retrieve is only as good as the information he inputs. This is a major flaw as most users will not have time to do all this input.





PROPOSAL NO.: 9961176 INSTITUTION: Welch Company NSF PROGRAM: SMALL BUSINESS PHASE I PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Welch, Rod TITLE: SBIR Phase I: System of Metrics for Business Communications RATING: Poor

REVIEW:

Please rate each of the individual criteria listed below as Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, or Poor and provide comments to reflect your rating.

Criterion 1.

What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity? This criterion addresses the overall quality of the proposed activity to advance science and engineering through research and education.

Criterion 2.

What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity? This criterion addresses the overall impact of the proposed activity.

The PI proposes to improve enterprise management by developing business metrics for improved communication.

The goal is certainly ambitious. However, the text is unclear as to what will be done, hugely overstated in its claims, and entirely lacking in any documentation of these claims.