Natural Language Processing

Application Domain: Querying Data for Business Model Optimization

“Unstructured data” refers to data that are often text-based (as opposed to numeric), and have no data model. Yet, the information contained in this type of data can lead to significant business and financial intelligence.

The applied research question we're addressing is whether empirical data and machine-learning tools can help us understand financial risk profiles in an industry-specific context?

Since 2007, we developed and patented an algorithmic approach to uncover risk and opportunity in private investments. Using unstructured data from social networks and other publicly available resources, and the context of industry value chains, our KeyStone Compact® algorithms quantitatively profile the business model risks of startups, SMEs and corporate lines of business.

The analysis is typically conducted in two stages:

1. A data clustering approach based on semantic tags (e.g. value chain, partnership, scaling), and
2. Computational business intelligence (market, team, industry) using the data metaclusters as objects.

Drawing from research on strategy, marketing models, and business valuation tools, the KeyStone Compact® risk model analyzes the company through two lenses: Industry value chain position; and Investment Grade (tied to market access opportunity) .

1. The Industry view considers how the company is positioned in terms of its leverage, dependencies, team and intellectual assets
2. The Investment view considers the upside potential and time to scale given its industry value chain position and capabilities to overcome the dependencies and access to markets

These tools are commercialized by Corymbus Asset Management and one of its channel partners, the Global CleanTech Cluster Association. To date, 1000's of companies have been analyzed and positioned, and over $500M. of debt and equity capital invested in selected companies.

Students and Collaborators

Nicole Bette, MSc, Biomedical Engineering; Kavya Vayyasi, MSc, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Nic Miller, BSE, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Sven Adriaens, BBA, Finance, Michigan State University

Alex Mercier, MSc (EWRE), IT and Cyber Security management Consultant at Wavestone, UK; Antti Tahvanainen, PhD, Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, Helsinki, Finland; Tim Faley, Professor and Sokoloff Chair of Entrepreneurship, University of the Virgin Islands; David Brophy, Professor, Ross School of Business.