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Herwig, after several years of sophisticated knowledge management research you decided to start your startup xohana.com. What were the reasons to become a web-entrepreneur?

Research is great. As a researcher, you get paid for living in the  future. William Gibson famously remarked that the future is already  here - it's just not very evenly distributed. I really want to  distribute it a bit more evenly. But to do that on a larger scale  requires build an own business: www.xohana.com

What is Xohana actually about? Can you give us a short description of the service?

It is the world's first really effective intention economy platform -  a kind of web-based marketplace starting with the buyer's individual  needs rather than the seller's available products. So basically we're  structuring demand. Most services today are still about structuring  supply - getting more accurate product data, making it searchable etc.  By contrast, Xohana helps people better articulate what they really  want, and then uses that knowledge to help them get it. For sellers of  appropriate services, that knowledge means highly qualified sales  leads as well as market research.

You are also an expert on semantic technologies and familiar with the Semantic Web. What role does semantics play in Xohana? Could you lift some of the technological secrets below the surface?

We use semantic technologies mainly to make intelligent suggestions  during the preference elicitation process, on a much finer level than  is common today. Xohana doesn't suggest products, but individual  criteria that are important to you. For example if you can finally go  on vacation again after a serious illness, suggestions about the kind of diet your destination should provide may be relevant.  Technologically, what we're most proud of is the range of modules that  provide these suggestions, which employ semantics in a very pragmatic  manner - deliberately not trying to be perfect, but instead always  focusing on the cost/benefit ratio of the whole process (including  ontology maintenance etc.). We also combine semantic and non-semantic  recommendations, and we've got a very flexible way of aggregating the  results of these different modules.

What is the business modell behind Xohana?

Right now (we're just starting out) we take a fee from providers who  get new customers through us. That's the usual way in tourism. In the future, in specific other markets, charging seekers will also make sense.

Where are you heading with Xohana? What are your plans regarding further features and business development?

We now focus on making people in our initial market (health tourism)  aware of how we can help them. But we're also open to strategic  partnerships and joint ventures. The nice thing is that what we do is  complementary to rather than competing with what most others are  doing. This offers many win-win opportunities for business  development. For example users coming to us but looking for more  standardized things we could send to a product-focused partner portal,  and vice versa.

About Herwig Rollett

Herwig Rollett enjoys connecting the dots - business needs, capabilities/partners, ideas - with strategies leveraging both people and tools. After many years in knowledge management, particularly at the Know-Center in Graz, his focus in on fundamental changes in the way we work, think, and create the future. The common thread of his endeavours is the quest for better ways to cope with complexity. He is author of a book on the processes and technologies enabling knowledge management and holds a PhD from Graz University of Technology.