Patent ID: 8706683

Claim:
A method comprising the steps of: maintaining a database of information representing knowledge attributable to at least one distributed entity; and providing an interface for presenting at least a portion of the information maintained in the database and for presenting one or more responses to one or more queries to the database, wherein at least a portion of the one or more responses is indicative of at least one of an expansion, a transfer and a leveraging of the knowledge attributable to the at least one distributed entity; wherein the interface is configured with features that when selected activate a display sequence representing historical expansion, historical transfer and historical leveraging of the knowledge attributable to the at least one distributed entity over a defined time interval responsive to user selections; wherein the features of the interface are configured when selected to activate a display sequence comprising a visualization of: historical expansion of at least a portion of the knowledge attributable to the at least one distributed entity within a given geographic region; historical transfer of at least a portion of the knowledge attributable to the at least one distributed entity between two or more geographic regions; and historical leveraging of at least a portion of the knowledge attributable to the at least one entity comprising turning at least a portion of the knowledge attributable to the at least one distributed entity into a quantitative value associated with knowledge-based activities for the distributed entity; wherein the interface displays: a lineage of a path that a given piece of knowledge took across the at least one distributed entity; and an indication of at least one of individuals and groups that propagated the given piece of knowledge across the at least one distributed entity, the path displayed on the interface being a path the given piece of knowledge took enroute to being leveraged by the at least one distributed entity; wherein the information representing knowledge attributable to at least one distributed entity comprises information relating to at least one of innovations and research associated with the at least one distributed entity; and wherein the steps are performed by at least one processing device comprising a processor coupled to a memory.