Important revolutions of the past 30 years include the Internet, personal computers, the XML programming language, and the breakup of AT&T. What do they have in common? All are based on innovations that break technology apart. After breaking a technology apart, it still works -- phone calls could still be made after the breakup of AT&T -- but it is composed of smaller and more flexible pieces that can be used to create new innovations. This process is called "disaggregation," so named because the pieces of the technology that were formerly stuck together are pried apart but not destroyed. Using the simple metaphor of the pebble and the avalanche -- prying rocks loose from a mountaintop releases tremendous energy -- this book explains the workings and benefits of disaggregation. Author Yudkowsky uses case studies from familiar companies and industries to explain how to generate similar innovations, in the process identifying strategies and tactics that maximize these innovations.
Dr. Moshe Yudkowsky has twenty years of experience in product development in high-technology industries.
Dr. Yudkowsky is president of Disaggregate, a consulting company that helps companies create, understand, and apply revolutionary technology -- which is also the topic of his book, "The Pebble and the Avalanche: How Taking Things Apart Creates Revolutions." He often provides consulting and education for a particular high-tech industry: speech recogntion, text-to-speech, and biometrics.
Moshe received his Ph.D. in Physics from Northwestern University; he joined Bell Laboratories in 1987. At Bell Labs, Dr. Yudkowsky worked on several large-scale deployments of speech recognition applications, with responsibilities ranging from architecture to DSP development to application design.
Moshe joined Dialogic Corp. in 1996 to nurture speech development (Dialogic was purchased by Intel in 1999). Dr. Yudkowsky left Dialogic/Intel in 2002 to found Disaggregate.
Dr. Yudkowsky was editor of the ECTF's Automatic Speech Recognition Task Group for over a decade, and served as Technical Chair of the ECTF in 2001. In 2002, he became the first Chair of the Midwest Speech Technology Association, an organization of speech technology professionals. He is also a board member of AVIOS, an international organization that promotes speech technology.
