So as I sit here at the Seattle airport killing five hours to catch the next available flight back to Albany – my original flight was mysteriously cancelled – I continue to reflect on MapWorld 2007 and all of the conversations, presentations and other interactions I enjoyed with clients, partners, prospects, and other business folks from around the world. A particular poignant conversation I enjoyed was with Brian Haney during lunch on Tuesday. It was remarkable not just because we talked about insurance, his keen sense of the importance of LI to his company and other topics that might put many of the non-insurance readers of this blog to sleep but also because of the prophetic analogy he offered that has been resonating in my head ever since. I’ll share it and attempt to explain why I feel it was so significant. I’m curious to see by way of your comments if you agree.
Brian, VP and Chief Actuary for James River Insurance Company explained to me the OODA Loop (aka “the Boyd cycle”) which Wikipedia defines this way:
The OODA loop “has become an important concept in both business and military strategy. According to military strategist John Boyd, decision-making occurs in a cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. An entity (either an individual or an organization) that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby “get inside” the opponent’s decision cycle and gain a military or business advantage.” That is, by completing the cycle faster than his opponent, a competitor can change his strategy with such dexterity that his opponent is continually struggling to adjust to what is essentially a moving target.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop
OODA is an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act.
When I consider these four activities, individually and collectively, I immediately see the role that Location Intelligence plays in each of these – or said another way, to me these are naturally core principles of the business capability that is referred to as Location Intelligence.
Observe & Orient – are all about knowing where you are and what’s around you. Key enablers are accurate address / location (geocoding) and the ability to consider that in context of other data elements. Decide – all this week at MapWorld we heard speaker after speaker talking about LI’s role in enabling better, more informed and timely decisions. Act – once a decision has been made, LI plays a key role in applying the outcome to the resulting appropriate action.
Whether it’s a locating a new store to capture further market share; managing the degree to which an insurance portfolio may be exposed to catastrophic levels of risk and buying the appropriate levels of reinsurance to maximize profit while capping risk; or embarking on a wireless network expansion that better services a burgeoning market – companies that have matured their location intelligence capacities most certainly complete the OODA loop with a higher degree of accuracy than their competitors.
I don’t mean to suggest that LI is all it takes. But, based upon my experience and those of the vast majority of MapInfo’s clients to whom I have been exposed around the world: I am impressed by the fact that they share attributes of industry leaders that include the other attributes that when enhanced by LI do in fact allow them to do loops around their competition.
Thanks to Brian for taking my brain on an OODA loop. What are you comments about this “Ode to OODA”?
Just a suggestion - for all of ‘us’ location intelligence specalists why don’t MapInfo host a separate job board? It’s tough to know which company actually needs some one with these spacialized skills and often these jobs are not posted on traditional job boards.
Although Pitney Bowes MapInfo only posts available internal jobs, there are several great sites for industry postings including Directions Magazine (http://www.directionsmag.com/careers/); GIS Lounge (http://gislounge.com/ll/joblistingsites.shtml); and GIS Careers (http://giscareers.com/).
Another place to look is Google - http://www.google.com/Top/Science/Social_Sciences/Geography/Geographic_Information_Systems/Employment/