Thread by @geo_will

I want to take a little time to discuss how we, @sparkgeo, consider the future geospatial market. I have been using a few tools to help me talk about ideas with my team: a strategic common language is really helpful. #strategicgeospatial

I share this content with my entire team. It’s critical we know what our purpose is, and why we are doing what we do. None of these tools solve anything, but they help us order complexity and see patterns. #strategicgeospatial

First, a quote.

1. Resource-Based View. – Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, Organization (VIRO)

Some companies view their competencies as their strategy. Internalism is worth considering in terms of focusing investment and differentiating. What are we good at? Why? and Who cares?

2. Dominant designs. Why does a car have 4 wheels? Who decided that? A dominant design is an accepted form. For instance, all GISs now look the same, they have done so for some time.

Was there a point when those designs could have been different? Consider the adjacent possible.

3. Complimentary assets. What assets and components make it possible to realize the potential value of a particular innovation? I see five central assets that enable modern geospatial.

A decade ago, these assets all existed but were quite differentiated. Now they are absolutely related, indeed overlapping.

This is a new market.

These capabilities did not exist a decade ago. Have the dominant designs changed? Why/why not?

4. The Fallacy of Obviousness. There are 2 sides to this coin:

Once you know something it's hard to imagine unknowing it.

If you focus on the thing you know (which we all do), you miss other obvious things happening around you.

Just because we feel something is well understood, does not mean others agree, understand or even know what you are talking about. In this gap, there is opportunity. Remember Gibson.

5. Inchoate demand. Demand-pull is bullshit if the consumer does not know what is possible; what can they pull? Again, remember Gibson, remember the Fallacy of Obviousness. Therefore, in new markets, there is only inchoate demand.

For instance, one obvious thing about climate change is that there are no commonly agreed solutions. There are no dominant designs; there is no obvious product we can build. Yet, measuring landscape change must matter.

Measuring and monitoring our changing planet is precisely what we (as geographers) do. Intrinsically, we can undertake the fundamentals of this task. But we do not know the form this product will need to take. This is a geospatial inchoate demand.

6. S-curves: Innovations sit on a curve of performance vs time. The performance curve drops a little, then it redirects up as a dominant design emerges. The performance then increases “linearly,” flattening off with maturity.

This does not mean that mature technology is superfluous, just that it is not getting much better in its present form.

One of @sparkgeo’s jobs is to navigate between s-curves and guide our clients responsibly. We try to consider the jobs to be done, over the technology stacks. Sometimes #geospatial is the wrong way, that's cool, there is plenty for us to do that makes sense.

7. Oceans and Venns: geospatial people love building geospatial tools for other geospatial people. Imagine how many geospatial people there are. Now imagine how many other people there are, which market would you rather serve?

But, if everyone is serving those geospatial users, who is attending to the other audience?

Sure, consumer markets are harder, and we need to navigate our own fallacy's to get there.

Because people have been forgotten.

Hardware companies build sensors; software companies build products. Few are delivering on solutions. In this, people have been forgotten.

@sparkgeo, we will continue to design, build, and deliver human-centric geospatial technology.

We build custom geospatial technology using the cloud to harness the enormous data flow from low earth orbit and billions of smart devices to tell stories about landscape changes and human activities.

Not only do we glue technologies together, but also data, people, and ideas. At our core, we care about how people use geospatial technology.

If you got this far, thanks for listening! This content was largely lifted from my presentation to the Sparkgeo team at our Vancouver 2022 meet-up.

Like this vision? Get on board -> [e-mail].

My thanks to @marcventresca and the @OxfordSBS for teaching me these tools and helping me to express and attempt to navigate the complexity of modern geospatial.