I feel very conflicted about this article. On the one hand it’s great to see a mass business media publication like Forbes writing about the importance of GIS to business, on the other hand, I am saddened to see that Jack, and the article refer to the business applications as “emerging”. I’d argue they are not emerging, but have been there. I have spent the better part of my career establishing the use go geographic or spatial analysis in the business context, and some very large companies are known for deploying GIS. ESRI has, admittedly been late to that game (MapInfo – now part of Pitney Bowes – was the dominant player for a while), but the work the truly disruptive force in the space are MapBlast (acquired by MSFT), Google, and MapBox. They all share in common the fact that they truly democratized the use of maps in business by a) injecting new ideas/approaches, b) becoming active contributors to an open (source/data) movement, and c) embracing a diverse ecosystem of players.
Connected: Jack Dangermond, president, Esri.