In this series, academic and industry leaders explore the growing influence of discovery on consumer behavior and business’ bottom line.

Software veteran, John Furrier, interviews recognized experts within the fields of economics, psychology and computer science to explore the importance online discovery and its implications for online businesses. Panelists share insights from their personal research, identify best practices and suggest ways for businesses to leverage this important new communications and sales channel.

 

Title: Discovery Comes of Age
Paul Martino, CEO, Aggregate Knowledge
Discovery has moved from a simple recommendation engine to a whole new way of finding products and information online. In this podcast, Aggregate Knowledge CEO Paul Martino, a pioneer in Discovery, discusses “What is Discovery?” He’ll address the relationship of Discovery to search, personalization, behavioral targeting, and recommendation engines.

Paul Martino is the CEO and cofounder of Aggregate Knowledge, which is the fourth company that he has founded over his 20 year technology career. Martino was previously the CTO and founder of Tribe Network, which was acquired by Cisco. In addition to being a serial entrepreneur, he has held senior business development positions at Intertrust and SkyPilot. The highly scalable architecture of Pique is based on the research work Martino did on massively parallel graph algorithms while a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. Paul also holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Lehigh University and an M.S. in Computer Science from Princeton.
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Title: The Paradox of Choice
Barry Schwartz, Ph.D.
Barry Schwartz, award-winning author of The Paradox of Choice: How More is Less, explains how the increasing demand for options actually decreases consumer confidence and satisfaction: people can be overwhelmed with too many choices. In this podcast, Schwartz discusses his research and how it can apply in the online world.  He gives practical advice for retailers on how they can delight their customers and be successful in the online world.

Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College. He is the author of several books, including The Battle for Human Nature: The Science, Morality and Modern Life and The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life. His articles have appeared in many of the leading journals in his field including the American Psychologist.
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Title: Recommendations 2.0
John Riedl, Ph.D.
John Riedl, author of Word of Mouse: The Marketing Power of Collaborative Filtering, discusses the evolution of recommendation systems and lessons learned from his experience at Net Perceptions. He outlines how the technology has evolved from difficult and expensive system to deploy, to simple and effective. Now, virtually any online businesses can have an efficient, low-risk way to integrate discovery into their marketing and merchandising decision-making. Riedl explains why just employing a keyword search on a site isn’t enough in the Web 2.0 world.

John Riedl was co-founder and Chief Scientist for Net Perceptions, an early leader in online personalization technology. Riedl is currently a professor in the computer science department at the University of Minnesota where his research includes the GroupLens Project one of the most famous collaborative filtering and recommendation research groups in the world. In 1999, Riedl and other Net Perceptions co-founders shared the MIT Sloan School’s award for E-Commerce Technology.
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Title: From Search to Discovery
Yezdi Lashkari
Yezdi Lashkari outlines the origins and limitations of collaborative filtering, the importance of Web 2.0, and how the commoditization of certain specific web technologies will benefit both consumers and businesses alike. He addresses the importance of blending algorithms to effectively harness collective user behavior, and the wisdom of crowds.

Yezdi Lashkari was a co-founder of Firefly Networks (acquired by Microsoft), a pioneering company in the area of collaborative filtering and personalization.  Lashkari recently left Microsoft, where he played a number of senior product leadership roles, the last being a special assignment sponsored directly by CEO Steven Ballmer, focused on researching large scale network-centric computing infrastructures for thousands of hosts. This work is now driving one of the technical pillars of the post-Vista Windows release. Lashkari holds numerous patents in collaborative filtering, data protection and user profiling technologies. He received his M.S. from the MIT Media Laboratory and has three computer science degrees covering research areas ranging from artificial intelligence, databases, to collaborative filtering and personalization.
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Title: The Internet Operating System
Tim O'Reilly
Tim O’Reilly, a pioneer in web technology, discusses what it means for the Internet to be a platform. He proposes companies that value the user will be the real winners in the Web 2.0 and give sound advice on technologies and approaches that retailers and media companies should embark on to be successful in this new era of user-driven content.

Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. The company also publishes online through the O’Reilly Network and hosts conferences on technology topics. Tim is an activist for open source, open standards, and sensible intellectual property laws. Since 1978, Tim has led the company’s pursuit of its core goal: to be a catalyst for technology change by capturing and transmitting the knowledge of “alpha geeks” and other innovators.
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