Where am I? The starting point....

July 27, 2009

Where am I? I am in Reston, Virginia where I am starting a new blog on applied business geography.

A new book, You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall, by Colin Ellard (Doubleday, 2009) deals with how we do and don't find our way in our surroundings. Spatial intelligence is a requirement for survival in all living creatures, yet this ability is not always very well developed in people or used wisely, if at all, in human organizations. Applied spatial intelligence in business is the focus of my work.

Since I recently started a new business, Location Science Service & Technology, Inc. (LoSST for short), the book's title reinforced my belief that such an important topic needed to be addressed by many business organizations. The ability to use location information (location intelligence) to increase revenue and/or reduce costs is important any time, particularly in a down economy. Furthermore, to prepare for the ultimate upturn, business as usual is not always an option. Business strategies, goals and a definite direction imply that a map exists where one can set a course to get to the desired destination. Using spatial intelligence for business success should be a primary consideration in a competitive economy.

Going through time is rather easy. All we have to do is get up the next day and we have arrived. Getting through space, however, is more difficult since we have to make choices on direction or set of directions to navigate from one position to another. For example, there are a large number of locations where a business can be located, with only one or a few places better than the others.

So, what is the focus of this discussion? Location plays a role in business, sometimes large and sometimes small, with the realization that locational considerations can be leveraged to gain a better competitive position that adds to the bottom line. Geographic reasoning, technology and data can be applied to support better everyday business approaches in marketing, operations, business development and other critical areas in most businesses.

I plan to elaborate on this topic in future commentaries.