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P A G E C O N T E N T S : The result I got answered the question I asked The Patent's new polymorphic paradigm What-if modeling versus what-if analysis "Write once run many modeling" License and implement the Patented Aware technology Your own creativity is the only limit when applying the Patent to your own applications
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Historical Patent Background By Richard S. Richards, Inventor How the Patent was conceived I was working for a software company in Los Angeles in the late 1980's. We were developing a software product that was based on a specialized financial model. The model was developed by the company founder for the IBM Executive School in Armonk, NY when he was the head of that program for IBM. The model would let you take financial data from the financial statement and perform historical analysis and future projections. It provided a unique financial perspective of assets, income and cash simultaneously. It was a really neat product for understanding what had happened, why it had happened and how to potentially make things happen financially in the future. After several years, several million dollars, and several hundred thousand lines of computer C code we had the financial model built and ready for market. However, in the process I made the observation that the model that we had built was just one of several models that the product's users might want to use. If you change just one key assumption upon which the model is built, you need to build a different model. That is, the variables in the model might not change, but the calculations that were performed would need to change. Thus, you would need an alternate form of the first model. For example, if you calculate return on investment in the original model, what-if you wanted to enter return on investment and solve for assets. With a model built using source code written in the C language you couldn't. The model is fixed in form. Of course, you could program in a certain amount of flexibility or alternatives, but as I thought about it I kept finding more and more alternative models. Ultimately, the C source code based solution is clearly not an optimal method to achieve the goal leveraging a single model into multiple models. Further, you can't use any other product such as a spreadsheet to do this either. In a spreadsheet, if you put a value on a formula cell, it erases the formula, breaks the model, and changes the cell to an input cell with a new value. What we want is for the model to change in an intelligent way so that we can enter ROI and solve for assets, without having to build a whole new separate model for that purpose. So, I started to wonder if it would take several more years and several more millions of dollars, and several more hundreds of thousands of lines of C code to write each of the alternative models that a user might want to have access to. Or, was there a way to accomplish the desired results by an alternative means. I didn't know of any at the time and could not find any alternatives, so the only thing to do was to invent a solution. The result I got answered the question I asked The question that I asked was, "is it possible to build a technology that is aware of the fact that every model has implicit within it alternative forms of analysis that the user might want to perform. What if there was a way to make those alternatives available to the user? Wouldn't one be able to accomplish a greater range of analysis with less source code? Wouldn't these benefits be valuable in software development since fewer lines of code means greater productivity and shorter delivery times? Wouldn't the user benefit from a broader range of analysis which delivers more information from every model thus adding value?" Of course, the answer to these questions was ultimately, "YES." It took me from 1994 to 2001 to develop and patent the polymorphic enhanced modeling capabilities of the present Aware™ technology, and now others can benefit from my work by licensing this technology and putting it to work in their own software development. But first, do not be intimidated by the sound of the title, "Polymorphic Enhanced Modeling." All that polymorphic means is the ability to change from one form into another form. To enhance something is not scary eighter, we're just making our models work better. Modeling is simply defining a set of relationships using equations or formulas to help us calculate a result. So this rather complex sounding phrase simply means to "improve our model's operations by allowing them to change from one form into another form in order to calculate a new set of results." What-if Analysis versus What-if Modeling In what-if analysis you change the input values in order to determine what effect it has on the output values. In polymrophic modeling you ask a different kind of question. You ask, "if the input changes the model what will the effect of both the new model and the new value be." We call this type of analysis, What-if Modeling, because not only does the input affect the calculated results, but the model itself must also change before the results can be calculated. What-if Modeling is a two step process, first change the model, then perform the what-if analysis on the new model. Thus, What-if Modeling includes what-if analysis, but what-if analysis does not include What-if Modeling. When the Java language was first introduced, Sun Microsystems coined the phrase, "write once, run many" as a way to market the benefits of Java. The idea is that you write the source code just once and then you can run it on many different operating systems. The benefits of such productivity increases are readily apparent. The same slogan can be applied to Polymorphic Enhanced Modeling. You write one model and then run many alternative models for an analogous productivity increase. Better still, the productivity increases are two fold, developers benefit from fast model development with greater power and fewer lines of code, and user benefit from easy operation for sophisticated analysis with a wider and deeper analytical scope which is a great improvement over models of the prior generation. Polymorphic Enhanced Modeling is a new paradigm. It will take a little time and self education to become familiar with it and to really believe in the benefits. But, I can tell you this, "once a user gets used to this new paradigm, they will never want to go back." In order to communicate the benefits of polymorphic enhanced modeling we have developed two products to showcase these capabilities, 1st Financials and the Aware Spreadsheet. 1st Financials - You don't see the permutations until we point them out 1st Financials almost totally hides the polymorphic modeling capabilities, so that the user doesn't even notice it is there, operating in the background. The product produces a wide range of finanical charts based upon financial data from the financial statement. Users can enter values in any table anywhere in the model. The magic is in the fact that the model must change in a context sensitive fashion in order for the user to be able to enter a value anywhere in the model. What used to be a calculated field might next become an input field when the user makes an entry into it. Thus, the model must change forms to allow the input and calculate an alternative set of results. But the user is unaware that this is happening. In fact, more than 100 alternative models are automatically available to the user. The key concept here is that the developers only had to write the first model and the technology automatically provides the hundreds of alternate model forms. Thus, the developer is happy since there is only one model to build and the user is happy because it is easy to operate a model when you can enter a value anywhere and get a valid result. The computational engine for the 1st Financials product is the Aware technology polymorphic Patented modeling paradigm. Aware Spreadsheet - Omnidirectional What-if Modeling The Aware Spreadsheet is an embodiment that looks very much like Microsoft Excel, with an added twist. It can perform polymorphic modeling while Excel cannot. In Excel, when you enter a value into a formula cell it erases the formula, breaks the model and replaces the formula with the value. In the Aware spreadsheet the model changes forms, the value is entered into the cell, and a valid result is calculated. In addition, there are multiple ways in which a model can change that are user selectable. These range from static to interactive and dynamic permutations, as well as single and multiple permutations which lead to permutations that can take any direction through a model the user would like. We call this capabilities, "Omnidirectional Modeling." In omnidirectional what-if modeling, the user can control permutation pathways through the model to provide an almost unlimited number of alternative model permutations. Implementing the Licensed Aware Technology You may be asking yourself how you would incorporate the Polymorphic paradigm into your own applications and models. The simplest analogy to communicate the integration of these capabilities is that of an Add-on. Picture a floating toolbar with a set of capabilities for controlling the permutation process on a cell by cell, sheet by sheet, or model by model basis. Installation of this floating toolbar requires that you slightly modify your data structure to support polymorphic modeling commands and controls on the toolbar. It also requires that you enhance certain operations within your application to include a set of polymorhic behaviors in response to context sensitive events, such as a user entering a value into a formula cell. Thus, the polymoprhic paradigm is accomplished with a combination of data structure and algorithms. When you license the Aware technology, you are given the right to use the methods of the Patent within your own develoment environment to enhance your applications, and add the polymoprhic behaviors to your models. The methods of the Patent can be implemented in any programming language, on any operating system, and even across networks such as over the Internet. Using component development strategies you build the polymoprhic components with capabilities that are reusable for future development to gain additional productivity gains. The only limitation is your own creativity Once you understand the benefits of the Polymorphic paradigm, you will begin to develop ideas of your own on how to implement this technology to benefit your developers and your users alike, in ways here-to-fore unknown. I invite you to download and try out our trial versions of the 1st Financials and the Aware Spreadsheet products. Seeing is believing. So take a look, try our example models, purchase the full versions and make use of these analytical tools. Then, if you have an application that you think can benefit from these capabilities contact us about our Licensing program. |
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