APTIMA INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N172-131

Description

Organizations face two existential challenges: to anticipate and create surprise. Inefficiency and ineffectiveness are inevitable outcomes of the ensuing struggle. To mitigate these outcomes, organizations increasingly seek external help and guidance. However, the rush for such assistance betrays missed opportunity. Embedded knowledge and self-actualization among members remain largely untapped resources in decision-making within organizations.<br>To address this shortcoming, Aptima proposes a system of trust capable of eliciting input from an organizations members systematically and, through an iterative process, producing a ranked list of solutions or proposals for executive action. Aptimas solution allows members of an organization to become key actors in enhancing the decision-making capabilities and well-being not only of their organization as a whole, but potentially of specific functional units and individual members therein. Aspects of behavioral game theory, collective decision-making, and network science will be used to inform an iterative process of collective divergence and convergence toward the end-goal.