This page contains a yearly review on my research. It is at leased updated twice a year. It will give a general view on the activities during that academically year (starting October). The page is a way for me to reflect on what has happening over larger time period.

2010-2011-- MOSI assistant: Making novelty emerge with Drupal ecosystem as living-lab
2009-2010-- MOSI assistant: Experiment to test EIP (the unexpected outcome of WSDB)
2008-2009-- MOSI assistant: Presenting Enterprise Innovation Planning (EIP)
2007-2008-- MOSI assistant: Novelty theory & Web service development for business (WSDB)
2006-2007-- MOSI assistant: Teaching & exploring management (IT & innovation)
2005-2006-- Project developer KnoSoS: knowledge sharing over social software (for MOSI)
2004-2005-- Project developer CRAB: Cartography of Research Actors Brussels (for DISC)
2003-2004-- Independent: ECCO (Evolution Complexity and COgnition) and DISC
2002-2003-- Student: Creative agent, Master thesis
2000-2002-- Student: Experiments during Master studies

2006-ongoing-- Drupal community
2005-ongoing-- MOSI group
2003-ongoing-- Novelty model

Introduction

In 1998 during my summer/student job at Starlab nv, the blue sky research facility, I've encountered an atmosphere where being creative with science and technology was the key to create innovation. I was only helping out to organize a conference, but experienced first had what it means to working in high-tech and creativity stimulating environment . It became clear that Starlab was a state-of-the-art experiment when I've got disillusion by how innovation is happening in general.
The reason to take an academic studies in informatics was related to that summer job, but even more to the program language scheme. Scheme got me interested in dynamics of information processing and I found it interesting to understand how a program is related to Artificial Intelligence. The courses on AI however was yet another disillusion, with its focus on expert systems and simplified simulations that in general was all about statistical mining. The two disillusion (in innovation and in AI) would become my focus on understanding the cybernetics of controlling/managing something that is unknown. It was first explained as a research on intelligence and creatively/innovation. It became the research on novelty.

Master in Computer Science

To make the ideas explicit simulations where created. I was able to code 8h to 15h a day during 2000-2003, a luxury if you think of it. In the summer of 2000 I started my first project and would work on it for more then a year. It was an agent simulation representing animals in a habitat. The simulation was inspired on games where you had a map and a mini-map to scroll a 2D-world. The agent had some variables that would change by every step they made and when the values hits a specific value, a concept would get triggered like hungry thirst, etc. This concept would get evaluated by a logic program that represented the animal cognitive structure. The experiment was a first attempt to understand the relation between embodiment and rational reasoning. Reflecting on the results, the question arise how the logic got their in it in the first place. By expanding the project with visual recognition and self-organizing of lexicon more questions than answers where created.
In my second project in the Fall of 2001 I became creative with the knowledge of expert systems. The new agent's cognition contained a a mixture of reinforcement learning and bayesian logics. The reinforcement learning was used to track back the reward in a specific context. The bayesian logic analyze the context of the reward, thus creating several context to do reinforcement learning in. The interesting part of the solution is to see how an interplay of the two quite statical methods can resolve a highly dynamic interaction. Several problems exist with the method. First it seems impossible to explain the origin of the method in an evolutionarily plausible way. The second problem is that when we look at the history of innovations we notice agents create their environment. Thus our created solution is only good enough to find the rules. The rules would not change the environment. I wanted to investigate creative agents. Lucky I found a mentor in the same line of thoughts, Walter Van de Velde. During the summer of 2002 we discussed an search for agents who learn by doing and do by learning. The idea of craftsmanship was the prior inspiration. For example, how does a painter improve herself by doing?

Creative Agents

After several investigations related to creative/innovative agent a challenge was created. The goal was to get a clear vision by making incremental iterative simulations that where used to adapt our view. In February 2003 a specific experiment arose. The agent would start with a knowledge base to "survive" in its environment, but its actions would change the surrounding, forcing his knowledge-system to adapt along the way. The simulation was inspired by a documentary of apes using primitive tools. In my simulation the principle was to figure out how an agent could learn from "eating the fruit of nuts" to "breaking the nut with a stone" to get the fruit out of it. In the setup the agent had knowledge of stones and knew that stones break other stones. The whole solution seams amazingly rational if you look at the process afterwards. First the agent picks up fruit from open shells and it would make the relation with shelter and fruit. By getting some fruits out of half-open shells it would notice the spontaneous breaking of the shell. By eating fruit, open shells would become rear. So the agent has to get fruits out of the shell. From this moment on the agent could find nuts that are to hard to break. Giving him a problem of something that did work earlier on. To solve this the agent search is knowledge system and tries to recombine it to find a solution that may work. So the agent thinks of using a stone to break the nut. After trying it out, the positive feedback would add it as new option.
By the incremental simulations each of the rational steps just explained would become more concrete. Simultaneous the design would change to make the actions possible. The chalange was to shift away from hard coded "knowledge" to a system that learns knowledge. The method used allowed us to get over our own restrictions. For example, in AI you learn the trouble of ambiguity in visual recognition: how do you recognize the object without failures? It turns out we actually need the ambiguity and that such failures are natural and the source for new opportunities. For example, failing to separate the nut from the fruit allowed learning. In the simulation a value, representing the hardness of the nut, would stimulate the ambiguity. When the harness was very low no distinct recognition was made between nut or fruit. In case of low harness the nut could break spontaneous and become the fruit. The agent could observe the phenomena of breaking and use it later on to do it intentionally. A similar ambiguity relates breaking and stones This, than, would lead to an agents regulating its actions to create from understanding out of ambiguity.

Novelty model

By putting so much time to develop the simulations with my Master thesis, it did not put time on other parts, like understanding the existing literature in greater depth. This is where my interdisciplinary research started. I'm connecting the dots in embodied-extended cognition, with studies on the emerging of science, with literature on innovation management and with knowledge on software development. The creative agent simulation was an embodied-extended cognition experiment, many of the literature gave me a better understanding how it fits with current research on cognition. However, the focus on emerging of knowledge is much more related to research on science studies. Interestingly the two domains have each a publication of a design of a control-system that is similar to my creative agent, thus came the generalization to "novelty". While the two domains help to understanding the problem it is innovation management that really requires the insights. The research renews the interest in IT-management to see how software development can help people to conduct innovation in a more structured way.

MOSI group

The workshop Tanguy organized at the VUB in 2005 was may first contact with the MOSI group. Later that year I would become project developer for the KnoSoS project and so become an member of the department. One year later, when Tanguy finished his PhD, I took over the position as teaching assistant and PhD student. I'll be in that position until September 2012.

Drupal community

We met Dries Buytaert end 2005 to see if Drupal would be a good tool for our KnoSoS project. While coding in Drupal most of 2006 I only became active in the community by co-organizing Drupalcon 2006. However, my activities have always been in the marge of the community.

2003-2004

End 2003 and beginning of 2004 started disappointing, my funding was rejected and the research lab Walter Van de Velde had hoped to create never happened (see DISC open letter). I understood I was standing alone (again) and knew my research needed to become embedded in the research landscape. At that point my research is about intelligence, cognition and awareness. I made contacts with Erik Myin at our university and we where creating a paper "The primacy of context" for the EELC congress in May. At the EELC Francis Heylighen contacted me with the suggestion to become member of ECCO. I knew Francis from the seminaries in 2002, but than ECCO didn't exist yet. The period with Erik and ASSC8 conference in June started a new aria in my activities: the need to get embedded and connected. I went to several FET & NEST information sessions to get contacts. My paper for EELC got rejected because of ill writing and to vague. I still didn't had any publication but my activities and the contacts I made convinced me of going on. Walter Van de Velde had suggested me to go to the convivio summer school in September, so I did. Convivio was another interesting view on IT and design and it fitted nicely in what Walter had learned me.

2004-2005

In October Walter Van de Velde contacted me with the option to work on the CRAB project. I would start at that project in December, at that time Walter was changing to a new function as one of the EU FET coordinators. The most part of my activities in 2005 was about developing CRAB and my interaction with ECCO. My relation with ECCO would become more imported, with my ECCO-colleges I kept on discussing our research, Francis became my advisor and helped me with writing a working paper and suggested some readings to get me more embedded. With Marko I was having some interesting collaboration and some outlines for papers, but he left in April and our plans got canceled. My own working paper transformed to a paper for EMCSR, thanks to the support of Francis.

In December I made my first contact with Tanguy Coenen on a workshop of Knowledge management and IT. So 2004 started bad, but it ended good. The developing of CRAB would also bring me into contact with several other interesting people and organizations like the cross-talk sessions and Maya Van Leemput who works on future studies. Still inside DISC where I was developing CRAB I was very isolated. In the mean while Tanguy and Dirk Kennis where preparing a IWT-TETRA on "Knowledge sharing" and in the summer they got the good news the project was accepted. They asked me to work on the KnoSoS project.
Next to cognitive research and the KnoSoS projects, I started to learn about entrepreneurs. I got back into contact with Walter De Brouwer, after a terrible accident with he's son we talk a lot in the Hospital. Walter is the nephew of my mother, but having a small family I call him my nephew as well. He was the head of Starlab and the reason I get the summer job (see introduction). Walter De Brouwer defended his PhD in September. We discussed topics several times that year and he gave me some interesting books to read.

2005-2006

I started working for KnoSoS in December. The atmosphere in the team was as good as it can get. I've became a Drupal addict and programmed a lot. Their where two new challenges, the fits is to code in team, the other is to push the code back to the open source community. My biggest talent in coding, creating new generic designs, became challenged with other needs in development. While being pleased with my skills for the generic design the problem of user demand did result in dirty code. Something I had trouble accepting. When Dries asked me tp co-organizing the drupal conference I did not have to think twice. It became an interesting coctail of three smaller events: govcamp, drupalcon and barcamp. ECCO was a bit on a low track during that year and so was my research on cognition. Everything was focused on KnoSoS and Drupal.

2006-2007

I've stopped working on the KnoSoS project as Tanguy finished he's PhD, their was the need for an assistant at MOSI. Of course I wanted to do this as I wanted to research & teaching. With KnoSoS entering a non-development face the timing was right. I became the assistant for programming and databases. Most of my time would go to creating exercises for the courses. Particualr for the programming course, which became a web development course. In the mean time I still was coding a bit jquery. My advisors in MOSI (E. Vandijck & E. Torfs) learned me a lot about IT governance. Next to this I was exploring literature on innovation management and the history of technology. During the summer I gave a presentation relating higher-level cognition to radical innovation. The research on using cognitive research for innovation management was just starting.

2007-2008

I was quit busy with teaching and so had little time for publications. The teaching would stay a significant part of my job as assistant, which I liked very much. In MOSI their was the meeting with the professors about the future of the programming course. This was done because of the unexpected success. We agreed to the name "Web service development for business" (WSDB). My interests in bringing web development in general and more specific Drupal to the academic sphere was shared by Kristof Van Tomme. However getting concrete support from both research funding institutes failed. Also the BoF-session on Drupalcon Szeged did not result in anything concrete.

ECCO also became more active and my only paper was related cognition, particularity a paper for the EMCSR congress that introducing the concept of novelty model. In April I got the idea to use the novelty model to design an "Enterprise Innovation Planning" (EIP), which would be based on the exploration into management. I made contact with Wim Van Haverbeke to discuss the design. He then introduced me to disruptive innovation. Indeed the concept disruptive growth engine fits nice with my EIP design. At that time I was working on a paper for the IFIP 8.6 "Open IT-based Innovation" conference. It got, as expected, refused, I went to the conference any way, to learn more about management, but that was a very confusing experience.

2008-2009

A first sketch of EIP was created in a paper for the ISPIM congress (International Society for Professional Innovation Management). Next to my advisors it was particularly Tanguy with who I was working out the EIP. The ISPIM congress was a great contrast to the IFIP 8.6 congress. This time I was able to make relations to my own research and with several people I had contact afterward. One other event that kept me interested were the Round tables on Service innovation, an initiative of IBM and AGORIA. I participated in the 4th meeting in September 2008 and the 5th meeting in February 2009, then we did two presentations with IBM alone and I presented my work at the 6th meeting in September 2009. I also gave three more seminars for MOSI/ECCO during the first semester.

Still teaching would take up most of my time. The WSDB was now given to first year master student, which was a different audience than the master-after-master students I had previous two years. In last two years, the students performing the best were the ones who used Drupal. To make that part obligated I had to add several new exercises and define the proper motivation. The new target group was also less familiar with the complexity of projects and needed more structure.

2009-2010

The period 2009-2010 begins and end with the same summer school by EIASM (European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management). Presenting my EIP there made me realize how hard it is to understand it and that it had to become less abstract. So by the end of the year I went back to see if it was more understandable (which was not so successful). During the EIASM 2009 I met Jeff Butler, who was very interested in web development in relation to innovation management and particularly to use it for supporting the R&D management journal. We start calling it the pre-publishing initiative, an idea Jeff already had for many years. During that first summer school it became clear to me how big the gap is between open source web development and what innovation management researchers knew about it. I've made a first sketch to address the issue in my R&D conference paper. The R&D management conference was as good as the ISPIM conference, although it is clear I've got quite some translating to do, this networks seem the appropriate place for my innovation research.

With my advisors at MOSI we arranged to visit companies to investigate the application of EIP against current practice. This has lead to few visits with big companies like IBM, Toyota, medium companies like Recticel and small companies like CREAX and Namahn and bigger research groups at our university like TONA. Thus, we shifted from internal seminars to external discussion about bringing the EIP project to practice. Remarkable non of our contacts had problems with our approach, in fact these contact made efforts to bring us into closer collaboration, at least to some point. Then there was always the time issue. Or there were no R&D structures close by, or the crisis would lead to internal restrucering or the constant struggle with deadlines would lead to postponed follow up meetings.

The failing of creating an experiment for EIP in existing organizations had one benefit. It made us realize we had other medium to do experiments: the WSDB-course. Every year the corrections to the course had lead to better projects. In 2008-2009 some students sold their project, but that were the mediocre projects. The best projects can be seen as a prototype and only when one of the students actually made a business plan and searched for funding did it occur to us that we had the conditions for spinoffs, not the expected spinoffs but micro-spinoffs. As a consequence we decided to stop trying to have the EIP integrated in an existing organization and focused more on understanding how to make EIP emerge with WSDB.

2010-2011

During the summer of 2010, with an PhD advisory meeting, we decided to fix the outline of the thesis, which has become the main focus of my work. Consequently I'm canceling all non directly related activities (like ECCO seminars), with exception to one last experiment: the pre-publishing idea. That experiment is consider part of the latest understanding on how online mediums can function as emerging living-labs. This relates to the unexpected insight that WSDB can be used to test the EIP. In retrospect it should not have been surprising. The research in ECCO has always had a focus on self-organization as to understand how novelty emerges. Looking at open source web development was the reason to go for web development projects like CRAB and KnoSoS. Still now it has become a lot more concrete. With a specific focus to create interviews I when to Drupalcon Copenhagen and what came out of the interviews was more than expected. Indeed like the outcome of WSDB. This was all combined in a white paper that turned out to be an homage to Drupal, although it was expected to become a research paper, I some where along the way could not keep out my love for Drupal. Many of the elements in that white paper will eventually get into research papers and most of it will get integrated in my PhD thesis. We have planned to do a test of pre-publishing with a Drupal journal/proceeding, based on all the recently gained insights.

On a less positive note is the unexpected change to my teaching task. I had to give a whole new course that I had to learn myself first. Not only did I had no affection with the topic (calculating net present value in excel), we were constantly fighting with technical problems too (try putting 140 students in a max. 40 size computer room). This has frustrated me a lot and has taken a toll on my energy level. Such a constant pressure from both teaching (as you need to give it by next week) and research (as I had to write a lot, to stick to the planning) cannot be healthy. I'm having stress for several weeks now, hopefully this will not result in a burn out.