Mendeley 'most likely to change the world for the better'

Changing the future of research is not too grand an ambition for the London-based startup that took centre stage at Guardian Activate 2010 – the company's grand ambition is to "change the world for the better". And some of the biggest names in technology think it can do it.

By crawling and extracting information from a user's library, Mendeley creates a directory of research for all users to search. In doing this, Mendeley is working to organise the world's research papers and facilitate collaboration among interested parties. Beth Simone Noveck, director of the White House Open Government Initiative, sees the potential of this tool extending far beyond research and academia. "We need a Mendeley for policy-makers," Noveck told delegates at the second annual Activate summit.

Mendeley beat competition from 41 ambitious startups to win the Guardian Activate Future Technologies pitching contest last week, a senior panel of investors deciding the self-styled "iTunes for research papers" was the project "most likely to change the world for the better".

Victor Henning, founder and director, accepted the award: "We launched 16 months ago and, as of yesterday, we have 400,000 users," he told delegates. "What's more, our database of research papers is doubling every 10 weeks. We're now reaching 30m papers – we're confident we'll overtake the 40m papers at Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge by the end of this year." Mendeley has thrown down the gauntlet – but the young company needn't draw parallels. Unlike the Thomson Reuters-owned EndNote and Web of Knowledge, Mendeley has the momentum to drive change.

Academia-bound information management tools are not a new thing. But never have they been as widely or excitedly welcomed. Odd, it seems, for an industry ripe for collaboration. The enthusiasm is, in large part, due to Mendeley's ease of use – but its longevity lies in the long-tail data that can be unearthed about who's reading what, when and why.

Mendeley's multi-tiered business model is another smart early move from a company yet to reach two years old, propelling sustained growth deeper into the decade of digital innovation.