Vaughan Merlyn, who is a management consultant, researcher, and author, has had as his primary focus for more than three decades now has been the use of information and information technology for business value creation. He was interviewed about software consulting and management.

Wei Zhao is currently the Dean of the School of Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Before he joined RPI in 2007, he was a Senior Associate Vice President for Research at Texas A&M University. Between 2005 and 2007, he also served as the Director for the Division of Computer and Network Systems in the National Science Foundation. He completed his undergraduate program in physics at Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China, in 1977. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1983 and 1986, respectively. During his career, he has also served as a faculty member at Amherst College, the University of Adelaide, and Texas A&M University. This interview was conducted by Ubiquity editor-in-chief John Gehl.

It is November 2008 and much of the globe is in the throes of recession. Innovation is on many minds. We need new products and new services generating new value for our customers and our companies. It is more important than ever to innovate. The problem is that our collective success rate is abysmal -- 4 percent according to Business Week in August 2005. As we set out on new innovation initiatives, it is a good time to reflect on the illusions that drag our success rates so low. One illusion is that is innovation is a novel ideal or product, another is that those who spend more on R&D get more innovation, and another is that innovation is about great inventions. Michael Schrage of MIT has been challenging these illusions for a long time. He discussed them with Ubiquity editor John Gehl in February 2006. Now is the perfect time to reflect again on what Michael has to say to us about innovation. --Peter Denning, Editor

Peter Denning teaches students at the Naval Postgraduate School how to develop strategic, big-picture thinking about the field of computing. Denning, a past president of ACM (1980-82), has been involved with communicating our discipline, computing, to outsiders since 1970. Along the way he invented the working set model for memory management, developed the theory of virtual memory, promulgated operating systems theory, co-invented operational analysis of system performance, co-founded CSNET, and led the ACM Publications Board while it developed the Digital Library. He is an ACM Fellow and holds five major ACM awards. He just completed a five-year term as chair of the ACM Education Board.

An interview with Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap: The first issue that any organization has to face is the identification of the deep smarts. Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap are co-authors of the new book 'Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom.' Leonard is a professor emerita at the Harvard Business School and Swap is a professor of psychology emeritus at Tufts, where he was also dean of the college.

Ken Sevcik is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. He received his B.S. in 1966 from Stanford University and his PhD in 1971 from the University of Chicago. Sevcik joined the faculty at the University of Toronto in 1971, and was Chair of the Department from 1990 to 1992. He also served as Director of the Computer Systems Research Institute (CSRI). His research interests are in the use of analytic models for performance analysis of resource allocation, scheduling and file structures in computer systems, computer networks, and distributed data management systems.

Mary Czerwinski is Senior Researcher and Group Manager Visualization and Interaction Research Group at Microsoft Research.

Anita M. McGahan is author of the new book 'How Industries Evolve: Principles for Achieving and Sustaining Superior Performance' (Harvard Business School Press). She is the Everett V. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar and Professor of Strategy & Policy at the Boston University School of Management, as well as a Senior Institute Associate at Harvard's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness.

Management consultant and futurist William P. Dunk says, "What collaboration is about is distributed intelligence, and I think that systems and governments and companies are all in such a degree of gridlock now that we desperately need to have broad-based intelligence coming into play everywhere."

Noted U.K. game designer Alan Lenton talks about his award-winning multi-player game Federation and discusses the sociology and psychology of gaming.

Neumont University co-founder and CEO Scott McKinley says the most innovative aspect of the Neumont curriculum is its focus on student projects: "Our freshmen are on project teams from the very beginning. Their first projects are simple, heavily scaffolded, and commensurate with their novice skills. By the time they enter their last three quarters, they're working on real industry projects for serious names that work with us, including IBM and Microsoft."

What is the difference between a falling stone and a falling cat? Mihai Nadin, who directs the newly established Institute for Research in Anticipatory Systems at the University of Texas at Dallas, holds a Ph.D. degree in aesthetics from the University of Bucharest and a post-doctoral degree in philosophy, logic and theory of science from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, West Germany. He earned an M.S. degree in electronics and computer science from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest and an M.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Bucharest. He has authored 23 books, including "The Civilization of Illiteracy," "Mind: Anticipation and Chaos," and "Anticipation: The End is Where We Start From."

Feng-Hsiung Hsu, whose book "Behind Deep Blue" told the story of world chess champion Garry Kasparov was defeated by the IBM computer known as Deep Blue, is now a senior manager and researcher at Microsoft Research Asia.