While domain knowledge may have been instrumental in launching SPSS, the same statistics and data analysis methods apply across many knowledge domains.

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There is a huge opportunity for software suppliers to differentiate themselves through a deep, longstanding domain knowledge of the verticals they operate in.

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To make it useful to the rest of the world requires domain knowledge, and often a transformation that is simply nonsensical within the source domain.

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The amount of domain knowledge about the business and the legacy systems that is embedded in the software developers is what the customer pays for and not really the technology fixes that get delivered through the year.

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Finally, the successful inventors had always maintained clear ties to sources of scientific knowledge in the public domain, by collaborating with university scientists, reading scientific publications, and so on.

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First, the firms that were able to contribute significantly to fresh knowledge in the new and emerging domain had forced themselves to continue to scan for new technological areas.

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