The Conference Board

 


Innovation Workshop Sessions

Session 5: Incentives and Data Protection

Session Goal, Rationale, Approach and Outcomes

The goal of this session is identify the incentives for organizations to provide data on innovation. It will also outline different types of approaches to protecting the confidentiality of respondents.

The reason is that any program to collect innovation data on businesses must have their full cooperation. This means both protecting the confidentiality of their responses and creating incentives for them to participate.

The approach is to have experts in confidentiality present innovative approaches to confidentiality protection, as well as a presentation on a data collection project that originated from the business community but ultimately failed.

A panel of business representatives will then discuss what ideas are likely to have appeal in the business world, and which are not (and why). The outcomes will be used in the white paper.

Background Reading and Brief Description

1. Computer and human approaches to confidentiality
Increasing use of computers and networks in business, government, recreation, and almost all aspects of daily life has led to a proliferation of online sensitive data, i.e., data that, if used improperly, can harm the data subjects. As a result, concern about the ownership, control, privacy, and accuracy of these data has become a top priority. The PORTIA project focuses on both the technical challenges of handling sensitive data and the policy and legal issues facing data subjects, data owners, and data users. The project's goals are (1) to design and develop a next generation of technology for handling sensitive information that is qualitatively better than the current generation's and (2) to create an effective conceptual framework for policy making and philosophical inquiry into the rights and responsibilities of data subjects, data owners, and data users.

Project: http://crypto.stanford.edu/portia/
People: Helen Nissenbaum http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/
and Anupam Datta http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/danupam/

2. Enabling Research with Real World Data while Preserving User Privacy
Evelyne Viegas runs programs that provide internet search tools to the academic research community. Some research is not possible without access to the information assets of corporations and constitutes a major roadblock to breakthrough innovation in internet research. Businesses cannot engage broadly with researchers on web research because the technologies and processes to provide access to sensitive user data while preserving users' privacies is lacking.

Evelyne will discuss ways in which she is working to solve the data access problem for researchers, while seeking to determine the potential for others (i.e., businesses) to benefit. For instance, if we can provide a model of information access for researchers, can we extend it to a general model of information access for any user to nurture innovation? The 'user' now participates as an 'innovator' and 'maker of information,' and with a growing demand to have information being accessible by anyone, from anywhere, at anytime, privately or socially, for individual, community, research or legal purposes, it is time to move towards information "enabling" technologies and processes which are human-centric and context-aware. What should such a model look like?

Project: http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/search/default.aspx
People: Evelyne Viegas http://research.microsoft.com/~evelynev/

3. Practical Approaches to Datasharing
Middleware is software that manages the interaction between an applications program and other software or the network. Within this large field, the Internet2 Middleware Initiative has focused on developing an interoperable Identity and Access Management infrastructure for Research and Education. Critical for security and collaboration, the Initiative's Identity and Access Management work includes a related model, tools, roadmaps, software, practices, standards, and education to help the community simplify the management of access to services, implement policy, increase security, and streamline operations. Since 2001, the Internet2 Middleware Initiative has led the technical activities of the NSF Middleware Initiative — Enterprise and Desktop Integration Technologies Consortium (NMI—EDIT) of Internet2 and EDUCAUSE to build and promulgate this interoperable infrastructure.

Project: http://www.internet2.edu/middleware/
People: http://www.educause.edu/Community/MemDir/Profiles/KennethJKlingenstein/68778
http://tnc2008.terena.org/schedule/people/show.php?person_id=28

4. Lessons Learned from PIMS
The PIMS project was initiated in the 1960s by senior managers at GE who wanted to know why some of their business units were more profitable than others. The project was picked up by Harvard and the Marketing Science Institute in the early 1970s and expanded to outside companies. The initial survey operated between 1970 and 1983 and involved 2,600 strategic business units (SBU), from 200 companies.

The PIMS project analyzed the data they had gathered to identify the options, problems, resources and opportunities faced by each SBU. Based on the spread of each business across different industries, it was hoped that the data could be drawn upon to provide other business, in the same industry, with empirical evidence of which strategies lead to increased profitability. The database continues to be updated and drawn upon by academics and companies today.

The original PIMS data survey led the PIMS project to identify 37 variables which account for the majority of business success. While many of these seem obvious, PIMS has the advantage of providing empirical data that define quantitative relationships and back what some may consider to be common—sense.

Project: http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521840538
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_impact_on_marketing_strategy
People: http://www.darden.virginia.edu/html/direc_detail.aspx?styleid=2&id=4304

Comments from the business community:
Martin Fleming http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_people.nsf/pages/fleming1.index.html
Gretchen Rawdon, FedEx Ground


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