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News from Cognitive Edge

Cognitive Edge changes…

March 6, 2012

Cognitive Edge 2012 - an exciting year of change marked by a new look!

 

Cognitive Edge is excited to announce some major changes here in the first quarter of 2012.  These changes are marked by a new look and a complete remake of our online presence.  Today with the launch of our new website we are announcing three corporate  developments and related changes:

1) An evolution of our Network model

2) Changes to our education program

3) SenseMaker® software collaboration

 

1) An evolution of our Network model - in the past 5 years Cognitive Edge has expanded its Network of practitioners from just over a 100 members to over 1200.  More than 3,500 people from 41 different countries have taken courses and seminars with us and our content continues to get strong reviews from attendees.  This has created a great foundation for our Network and this year we are evolving our model to better support our next level of growth an expansion.

We are excited to announce together with the launch of our new website the following changes to our Network:

  • Basic Membership: Is now available for free to anyone who would like to share some basic contact details.  All members can link and connect to other members in the Network. You'll get great content access - equivalent to the Methods you learned about if you took our Accreditation class (now called Practitioner Foundations)
  • Premium Membership: This access level will offer new content Monthly via a regular publishing cycle.  Premium member subscriptions will also receive benefits such as course & seminar training discounts and access to select online sessions hosted by CE experts and partners.  We are offering an introductory discounted price for 3 months of $149 USD (full annual price is $249) for a one year subscription.

In addition to having access to more materials and enhanced content, Members subscribing to our Premium content will be granted a commercial-use license.  The commercial use terms allow for derivative works which provide integration opportunities for Network members seeking to embed CE methods into their service offerings.

Our Ning community will remain in place for the next few months as we expand and activate more tools available to us with our new website platform.  Once a significant number of equivalent Ning features are activated on our own website we will be transitioning to our own platform.  This move will allows us greater flexibility to build on and enhance the rich content that the community continues to develop collectively. We’ll let Practitioners on Ning know early, when we plan to make this change...

 

2) Changes to our education program - Our education program will be evolving as follows:

  • Our Accreditation courses will now be called Practitioner Foundations.  The Basic content of our website will match our curriculum for Practitioner Foundations. We’ll be releasing artwork to all those who have attended Accreditation over the years and all who will attend Practitioner Foundations going forward, that indicates “Registered Practitioner” to all who’ve taken this class.
  • In the next few months we’ll be piloting a new Practitioner class: “Advanced Practitioner”. The education plan is then to release other “specialist” courses, for those who apply the Cognitive Edge Methods within a more focused way. These will likely include: Advanced Cynefin, Cynefin for software development, Knowledge Management, and others.  Watch for upcoming course announcements
  • We are in the process of developing a Trainer Certification which will include a Train-the-Trainer class as a part of a broader program. Initially this will be by invitation only, as we look to create a partnering status across differing geographies and focus areas. We’re interested in this being a business relationship in the first instance, with an expectation that these “partner businesses” will have certified trainers on their staff.  Please contact Warwick Holder, at warwick.holder@cognitive-edge.com if you are interested in learning more.

And for our third company announcement we are announcing a change to our software development direction.

3) SenseMaker® software collaboration - SenseMaker® and the patented methodology behind this approach to making sense of complex environments and situations continues to be recognised as a break-through in decision support and crowd-sourced scanning.  We want to maintain our ability to innovate across a range of application areas but we don’t see ourselves as owning or directing all the applications.  So we are striking a series of key partnerships to develop SenseMaker® in specific application fields, all of which will be available to the Network.  We are rebranding SenseMaker® as Powered by SenseMaker® to reflect this focus that coincides with the progressive launch of v3.0.

As a first step we are opening up the development environment to partners and Network members.  This will allow the expansion of our development capacity and accelerate the creation of a more diverse set of applications to be made available to the Network.  Our first training course for developers was delivered in Amsterdam this past month and we will be scheduling more in the coming months. 

So what does the software strategy change really mean?  Well think about the following opportunities:

 

  • a client wanting a customised web-experience that goes beyond the look and feel of our base offer can now draw on a trained developer who can configure a website that integrates directly with our servers.
  • dashboards can be created with monitoring and recall capabilities
  • integration with other tools and environments can be coded now so that narrative data gathered using the signification method can be linked to other system data (i.e. engineers can see maintenance experiences annotated in drawings)
  • a coder who wants to release a new visualisation tool for a license fee can develop in our environment and offer it to the SenseMaker® user base

So that rounds out the three business direction changes that are marked with the launch of our new website.  We will expand on this announcement in the coming weeks in blogs and other correspondence and look forward to addressing direct questions that are forwarded to us (see contact details below)

In addition to the above changes to our business direction our management team will also be taking on a new look.  Dave Snowden, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer will be assuming the role of acting-CEO.  Steve Bealing, co-founder and CEO, has decided to move on to new opportunities and will be transitioning out of the company in the coming months.  Steve will be working with the management team to facilitate a smooth transition and his dedication and support will continue in the interim as a lead on special projects and corporate initiatives. All existing members of the management team will continue in their roles working with Dave to execute the company’s evolving strategy. 

Moving forward CE will remain a global SME (small / medium enterprise) company with key staff located in Singapore, UK, Canada, and the United States.  Our US subsidiary company, Cognitive Edge (USA) Inc., has been in operation for a year now and continues to build its local presence in this large market.  CE also continues to develop its relations with key contractors, and partners in Canada, the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa, and Australia.  We remain open to expand on such relationships and welcome inquiries from all CE Network members.

We are looking forward to creating a different but familiar Cognitive Edge together with our Network members, business partners, and customers in the years ahead.  We have been preparing for change for several months and are excited that our new website was  ready in time to be the key marker signalling our exciting changes.

If you have any questions regarding any part of this announcement please contact us at info@cognitive-edge.com.