Across societal infrastructure systems, the inherited institutional mechanisms for stakeholder alignment are incomplete or inadequate for the twin challenges for creating value and mitigating harm. New proprietary technologies developed by the project team enable speedy representation of stakeholder interests at the system level. These technologies, combined with a service delivery model and a neutral stance, represents a powerful platform for advancing "the science of science" and increasing societal capabilities.
Preliminary applications of the technology have focused on community green energy, biomedicine, regional innovation, the geosciences, and other domains where a mix of public and private stakeholders are engaged in large-scale initiatives. The impacts of the proprietary technology are threefold: 1. The implementation of large-scale scientific and technological initiatives is accelerated; 2. Clear "go/ no-go" decisions, and strategic pivots, can be made more quickly; 3. New institutional arrangements, anchored in real-time data, are more effective, robust, and sustainable. Commercially, an entrepreneurial business with defined practice areas is contemplated, with a mix of public and private sector clients. The neutral "honest broker" stance is distinct from the work of single-client consulting firms. The entrepreneurial business will have a "double bottom-line" that emphasizes financial success and societal contributions. Of particular importance will be the multiplier effects through job creation, which will be documented on each project. For example, in a potential future project on the siting of a new power plant on a former Air Force base, there is the potential to generate over 500-800 jobs through the construction process and an additional 50-80 jobs associated in ongoing operations.
WayMark Systems helps to accelerate progress and avoid dead ends on complex projects and initiatives -- where there are many stakeholders and many interests that are "at stake." Though the I-Corps funding and training, WayMark Systems was able to incorporate as a new, double-bottom line enterprise, complete initial rounds of customer discovery, and focus on two service offerings: 1) Internal expert stakeholder maps (where a small number of internal experts provide inputs to generate a preliminary map of points of alignment and misalignment among stakeholders; and 2) External public impact stakeholder maps (where representative samples of all key stakeholders are surveyed to generate baseline and progress-tracking maps. Initial applications have been on key societal challenges, including community green energy, regional innovation, community digital inclusion, biomedicine, high performance computing infrastructure, geoscience cyberinfrastructure, and other large-scale public and private infrastructure projects, In addition to custom stakeholder maps and facilitation support, WayMark Systems is developing automated "software as a service" features of the stakeholder alignment process. WayMark’s stakeholder alignment visualization involved a voluntary disclosure to the University of Illinois, which led to a patent filing (Serial No. 13/907,291 – 2013). WayMark Systems measures success both through traditional entrepreneurial standards and through public impact in terms of job creation and institutional pivots. Ultimately, we are committed to aligning the stakeholders associated with social, technical, and economic infrastructures to ensure agile institutions and organizations at a time of accelerating technological change.
