ISPP

Identifying interests

Our proprietary Concept Hierarchy, like Princeton's WordNet, is built around the psycho-linguistic assumption our minds organize objects, and nouns we use as their tokens, hierarchically. It has  thousands of search terms mined from many word- & number-oriented sources about sustainable development, loosely defined. This makes it an intuitive way to collate answer a reporter's objective questions: Where, When, Who & What.

Fuzzy matching interleaves descriptors for number-oriented sources with alphanumeric strings in word-oriented sources. Our pattern recognition algorithms makes inferences about where users are on the abstraction ladder across the range of concepts relevant to a client's 'workspace'.

We provide clients with user profiles summarizing similarities and differences in breadth depth of the stakeholder interests for those they invite into their engagement process. 

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 Recognizing arguments

Corpus Minder searches for answers to a reporter's How & Why questions. It culls sources that rely on those in our Concept Hierarchy.

Its number-oriented focus is models for the US, down to Counties. Terms from their equations are added to the Concept Hierarchy but the main task is capturing model structure. We see this as how each strings together measured objects; or hypotheses about functional links among them.

We use pattern recognition to create a parallel assessment of strings in verbal models giving structure to the word-oriented sources we process.  We add fuzzy logic to merge results in 'concept-halos' of arguments from stakeholders we distinguish based on a client's typology. 

We use a proprietary evidence triage process to give qualitative and quantitative evidence more equal access to decision makers, looking beyond the latter's claim of greater rigor. Our goal is to help clients find the sweet spot where stakeholders see their views recognized even if not ultimately the consensus view. 

Clients may add to number- and word-oriented databases run through triage.

obvious ease of despite the onand equal chance of affecting decisions. to on equal footing with quantitative is agnostic about Quantification is superfluous for concepts few discuss; concepts often discussed but rarely measured should be priorities for number-crunchers.

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Seeking consensus

Our virtual Workspaces let clients invite stakeholders to communicate what they consider most relevant--in what our 'pump priming' work organizes. We collect and aggregate stakeholder views into Value Signals.

Our user interface qualifies stakeholders in broad terms, for two reasons. First, it lets us aggregate their views of  'pump priming'  content information in a client's workspace. Second, it structures client dialogue with stakeholders about what more should be added to the workspace before making resource allocation decisions. 

Our meta-protocols let clients assess costs-benefits of processes that engage stakeholders, individually and collectively. Our operational guideline templates let clients take or tailor protocols deciding what 'evidence' will and won't affect their decisions. We recommend but do not insist clients communicate such terms of reference to stakeholders invited into a workspace.

Depending on client 'priors', stakeholder may or may not be invited to recommend other 'grist for the mill'. That may be from online or offline sources. 

Our modern version of the Dashboard of Sustainability then facilitates dialogue among stakeholders about similarities and differences in optimal outcomes. Again, we recommend but do not insist clients advise stakeholders in advance how they imagine synthesis of interests. We also recommend clients explicate an upward spiraling project cycle logic; where lessons learned in one pass help stakeholders agree more quickly what to change and repeat next pass.

Virtual Workspaces help clients decide who best represents views of each stakeholder group and clarify criteria for selecting participants in follow-up meetings.

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