Despite improved connectivity, widespread adoption of email and other productivity applications, people still cannot efficiently find the specific, domain expertise they need to work effectively. An organization's collective knowledge, arguably its most valuable asset, is still locked up in disparate systems that don't reflect the employee's skill, knowledge and inherent ability to contribute to the success of the enterprise. PeoplePoint Systems, Inc., a technology spin-out from Applied Minds, has developed a powerful, intuitive Web 2.0 software application that finally allows an enterprise to easily manage its valuable intellectual capital by linking people's expertise with projects, ideas and documents. Building on Applied Minds' founder Danny Hillis's idea in his article "Aristotle: The Knowledge Web", PeoplePoint's application is based on a two year, collaborative development effort with its initial customer, the US Air Force Research Laboratories (AFRL). The AFRL uses the application to staff research and development efforts, trouble shoot projects, fuel ideation of new products and services, provide situational awareness, respond to potential new opportunities and improve customer support.

Unlike traditional software applications, PeoplePoint does not need to be installed on each computer, but rather is accessed through a web browser like Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Safari. This approach dramatically reduces the cost of implementation and support, particularly of geographically dispersed users. Unlike the traditional "personal webpage" approach to enterprise social collaboration, PeoplePoint has developed an innovative user interface that creates an interactive workspace within a browser. This enables users to easily drag and drop links to people, ideas, and documents into projects, personal and enterprise-wide searchable notes. The application's functionality encompasses the power of user-generated content normally associated with social networks, social book marking, tagging, wikis, blogs and enterprise search tools. The application can automatically alert users when new information relevant to their individual interests has been added to the system.

PeoplePoint's application collects information from enterprise systems extant within the organization and individual user's personal contributions including projects, interactions, experience, expertise and even their hobbies. The system design contemplates corporate permission and identity management systems as well as support for popular enterprise applications and data base systems. Deployment of PeoplePoint's application results in an organization that has an actionable inventory of it's inherent expertise, knowledge and capabilities that support business processes such as project management, situational awareness, ideation, new product development, sales and customer support.