Controlled Experiment on Search Engine Knowledge Extraction Capabilities

Continuous pressure on behalf of enterprises leads to a constant need for innovation. This involves exchanging results of knowledge and innovation among research groups and enterprises in accordance to the Open Innovation paradigm. The technologies that seem to be apparently attractive for exchanging knowledge are Internet and its search engines. Literature provides many discordant opinions on their efficacy, and to our best knowledge, no empirical evidence on the topic. This work starts from the definition of a Knowledge Acquisition Process, and presents a rigorous empirical investigation that evaluates the efficacy of the previous technologies within the Exploratory Search of Knowledge and of Relevant Knowledge according to specific requirements. The investigation has pointed out that these technologies are not effective for Explorative Search. The paper concludes with a brief analysis of other technologies to develop and analyze in order to overcome the weaknesses that this investigation has pointed out within the +Knowledge Acquisition Process.