More than 150 years later, a Seattle-based technology firm is transforming Melvill's eloquent sentiments from words to pictures--creating a potentially useful tool for commercial real estate and other industries. The five-year-old company, IntellectSpace, created an application called MarketVisual, which interactively shows relationships between people and companies.

"It creates on-demand maps that help to visualize and understand relationships between people and companies. Think of it as 'six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon', but for business," explains Sandro Gvelesiani, CEO and president of IntellectSpace. The application draws on SEC disclosures, corporate announcements and other unstructured data that is in the public domain to identify and visualize complex relationships and spheres of influence.

Using proprietary natural language processing, the application maps the name of a person or business. The result is a diagram or Knowledge Map that reveals key interrelationships and spheres of influence among companies, executives and institutions. "Knowledge Maps connect the dots by explaining business and personal connections, providing an at-a-glance understanding of complex ties," Gvelesiani explains. "They help you visualize and understand the relationships that drive decisions and create opportunities."

The product has its roots in the corporate scandals of 2002. "I was reading the Wall Street Journal and thinking about the billions of dollars that were lost, and thought to myself that it would be extremely useful to aggregate multiple pieces of information into one simple paradigm. With that information, an investor could perhaps avoid mistakes," Gvelesiani said. The objective is to quantify and make sense of scattered pieces of information, or as Gvelesiani puts it, provide investors with "actionable intelligence rather than just raw data."

"We look at information with respect to links and notes available in the marketplace on companies, people, organizations, government entities, education, mutual funds and industries. These links bind two entities together. For example; board positions, executive positions, suppliers, partners, family members, education and government are often linked together," he said.

The application can help an investor determine whether a potential independent board member actually has connections to top management or allow a CRE professional to capitalize on relationships between potential buyers, sellers and tenants. It can also offer insight into mergers and acquisitions, the company boasts. Take, for example, last year's $26-billion merger between private equity giant Blackstone and Hilton Hotels, one of the world's largest hotel chains.

NewsVisual, a blog powered by IntellectSpace, reports that senior leadership likely led the merger discussions, based on its analysis of multiple Knowledge Maps. Hilton board member John Notter and Blackstone vice chair Hamilton James shared board seats at Credit Suisse First Boston, and could have helped to spur discussions, the site suggests.

It then capitalized on the idea that James was key to the deal, and mapped his connections with former Hilton Hotel CEO Stephen Bollenbach. "Viewing this Knowledge Map shows that Bollenbach and James both share board seats with Flagstar Companies Inc./FCI Chairman James Adamson. Bollenbach sits on Kmart's board with Adamson and James sits on FCI's Board with Adamson. Adamson could have played a key role in bringing these powerhouses together," it suggests.

It's just speculation whether the deal actually unfolded that way. However, the application does demonstrate that there are potential stories behind stories--and that relationships can drive deal flow.