Theory Supporting Our Processes

There is much academic and real-world theory that supports our analytical methodology.  The fundamental support comes from psychology wherein researchers have found that merely being in the same workgroup as someone else who is a high performer allows you to improve your own performance.

We have taken that concept and added to it Human Resources project-tracking data and some relatively complex mathematical calculations to come up with our patent-pending database algorithms.

Some of the research that serves as the foundation to support our contentions are:

Jackson and Bruegmann (2009), in their paper titled "Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers" found that elementary school teacher's classroom performance increased when they were in the same department as a higher-performing peer.  They defined "peer" as someone who taught students in the same grade in the same school in the same year.

Papay et al. (2015), in their paper titled "Learning Job Skills from Colleagues at Work: Evidence from a Field Experiment Using Teacher Performance Data" found that low-performing teachers increased their classroom performance after working with high-performing teachers.  In their research project, they compare this connection-based learning to formalized on-the-job training and conclude "the results contrast a largely discouraging lack of performance improvements generated by formal on-the-job training for teachers."

Our own research has shown similar results for U.S. professional Major League Baseball players and for venture capitalists who invest in high-tech startup firms.