Patent Document ID: 9652121
Application ID: 14327832
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. An apparatus, comprising: a form-based Internet application that consists of a systematic structure of a series of tab forms to set up a framework for a collaborative effort from a group of participants on an issue-exploration process for an initial issue, where the group of participants use one or more client machines, where the series of tab forms are configured to allow the group of participants to anonymously perform stages of the issue-exploration process including generating ideas relevant to a current issue in a first tab form, assessing and assigning ratings to ideas regarding the current issue in a second tab form, including quantitatively assessing both an impact and a probability of the idea occurring, integrating the ideas amongst other ideas in a third tab form, and identifying any emerging insights from an integration of the ideas in at least a fourth tab form, where each tab form of the first, second, third, and fourth tab forms in the issue-exploration process is a different tab form presented in a user interface of the form-based internet application, where two or more of the series of tab forms have a series of menu options with pursuit-based functionality on the tab forms that can be performed under the tab forms to perform that pursuit, where the form-based Internet application is configured via the series of tab forms to enable and collect knowledge and said insights from the group of participants during the stages of the issue-exploration process, where the one or more client machines have i) browser software to access the form-based Internet application over a network, ii) a resident instance of the form-based Internet application on a first client machine configured to communicate 1) with other instances of the form-based Internet application on other client machines of the one or more client machines or 2) with a server-based back end system over the network, or iii) any combination of both i) and ii) to allow the group of participants to be able to share and compare their knowledge and said insights about a current issue in the issue-exploration process, where results collected from the knowledge and insights of the participants are then presented by the form-based Internet application on their client machine to all the participants, where the form-based Internet application has an open framework with the stages of the issue-exploration process in that an actual content of the ideas contributed by the group of participants actively shapes progression of the issue-exploration process from the initial issue to the current issue in the issue-exploration process, wherein the knowledge and insights contributed by the group of participants, as well as any plan of action are stored in a database, wherein the form-based Internet application is implemented as software code, hardware logic circuits, and any combination of the two, and portions of the form-based Internet application scripted in software code are stored in a non-transitory computing device readable medium in an executable format.