Daniel’s Blog

Everybody knows that there is a division between business and academia (unless you are interested in the academic side of business, or run the administration for a university). So whats the reason?

I briefly mention this in the forthcoming Semantic Web Gang podcast, and I think there are a few reasons.

Cause of Separation: Risk

Businesses are established, there is a certain amount of risk in regards to starting-up, starting a new venture or doing stuff with other businesses. These risks are analysed on a case-by-case basis to see if the risk can be minimised enough.

Academia on the other hands lives through creating new things, and the risk is not visible because research is to see whether something can be done, or not… and money goes into academia with this in mind. This thereby maximises the creativity of an academic institute, and minimises the risk of a business.

Cause of Separation: Interests

Because Academia has less risks, the broadness the “advanced-ness” allows academics to be interested in topics which aren’t necessarily suited to businesses making money, and output from an academic institute can be ideal from a “useful for everybody” kind of view. This isn’t always true, but the boundaries are pushed.

Businesses, on the other hand, are centrally focused on making money. If a project isn’t going to make money, or bring attention to the business then its not worth it.

A Separation between Business and Academic Conferences?

Yes there is… but its absolutely fine. But the reason isn’t really because there are “business camps” and “academic camps”, it is more to do with interest. For example, in terms of the Semantic Web / Linked Data businesses and academics seem to have their own conferences but really its because interests are different… for example, businesses want to know how they can make money from Semantic Web and then where to start, whereas academics tend to know Semantic Web stuff and are interested in learning about and starting new projects. Plus businesses and academics have different topics, for example businesses will want to learn about the “Web Open Database Connectivity” that the Linked Data Web provides, whereas academics would be more interested in the “Linguistic and Artificial Intelligence” of the Linked Data / Semantic Web.

However, saying all of this there are definitely subject overlaps and there are businessy people going to academic events, and academics going to businessy events… this is the way that it goes because what is being researched in the academic world will become less risky for businesses to implement.

The incremental approach

One thing mentioned on the forthcoming ‘cast when talking about the Linked Data Web is that a business doesn’t need to jump in with both feet straight away. There are incremental approaches which can be taken, one such approach is:

1. Expose your data internally as RDF. Engineers can then play with SPARQL and potentially inference, to get a feel for the power of data in this format. This doesn’t need to be linked to external data, and doesn’t need to be in any particular public ontology.
2. Explore external ontologies, see what value you can extract from them, because data in a common format is easier to understand by other things, and easier to query by human beings. If you can use the ontologies then do.
3. Expose your data to the world, but remembering privacy agreements. At this stage your data is Open Data and in a Common Format. There is a saying “sharing is caring”, and there has been a lot of research into the fact that data is most valuable when it is shared.
4. Link your data to the rest of the world: Find objects in other linked data websites. Because on the Semantic Web outbound links are just as queryable as inbound links.

After step 4, your data will be available for the world to query and people will be able to find exactly what they are looking for… making your Semantically-Enhanced Website very very findable amongst the chaotic forest which is the Web. Which is why I say going Semantic means turning the “Universe of Discord” into a “Universe of (Structured) Discourse”. And if you aren’t seeing any benefits at any stage of the incremental approach then its not so much of an expense to go back (but I definitely you suggest sticking with it!!!).