In a tech- and expert-driven business world, it is becoming increasingly vital for companies to be able to retain knowledge and expertise and educate employees as the business grows and changes. So vital, in fact, that knowledge acquisition and training has become something of an industry unto itself.
Enter Wiliamsport-based Discovery Machine. In 1999, Todd and Anna Griffith stumbled upon the idea of starting a company focused on making the transfer of knowledge easily accessible to non-technical experts.
Here's how it hit them: Todd was teaching computer science at Bucknell University while Anna was working with a
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency company on knowledge acquisition. According to Todd, she didn't have the software tools to do the work properly, and the kinds of programs she thought she needed coincided with the research Todd was doing.
So the pair began developing software that helps make the transfer of complex knowledge relatively straightforward. Out of this work emerged Discovery Machine Inc., of which Todd is president and Anna is CEO. The pair developed software and methods that capture the knowledge of a company or organization's experts--those who know the most about a process or given subject and implement that knowledge at the highest level--in order to enable a company or organization to retain that knowledge and expertise.
The company, which has until recently served mostly government clients such as the U.S. Navy and NASA, undertook a commercialization plan in late 2008 to make its services available to private companies such as Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, and Textron, as well as smaller
business enterprises and has continued on a path of growth ever since.
Discovery Machine's capacity to translate an organization's best
practices into a resource from which others can learn has also won
recognition as a DARPA Small Business Success
story. In 2010 the company earned the Product Innovation award from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern PA as Discovery Machine doubled its employee base. Early in 2011 the company announced the launch of a new academic program at the Pennsylvania College of Technology that will give computer programming students the opportunity to use the company's behavior modeling software throughout their studies.