March 2011 reprint F1103Z

hBr.OrG

vision statement

Locating Your Next Strategic OpportunityData and visualization by Sean Gourley of Quid; graphic design by Open

biochemicaldiagnostics

onlinerecruiting

music

financial

payments

e-commerce

networks security

cloud storage

dataanalytics

telecom

health careIT

semiconductors

biologics

search

biofuels

education

wind

solar

smart grid

travelreal estate

geolocation

imaging

medical devices

batteries

lighting LEDs

Locating Your Next Strategic Opportunity

To map semantic clus-ters, Quid software first identifies hundreds of key phrases associated with individual companies and organizations, or their

“n-grams.” Applying algo-rithms and other analyti-cal tools, the technology parses text in millions of corporate documents, from patent filings, to press releases, to Twitter posts. The software then creates a map with lines connecting companies whose n-grams are alike.

The lines act like gravita-tional pull: The more lines there are between com-panies, the more tightly together those companies are drawn. Similar firms become clustered into industry sectors.

The result is a multi-dimensional industry map like the one below. It represents 4,000 tech-nology enterprises—from venture-backed start-ups to established public companies—that received media coverage and

Where and how do strategists find growth opportunities? Sometimes by literally drawing a map, using a technique called semantic-clustering analysis. Such maps can reveal not only which sectors are thick with competition but where in the market white spaces are open for the taking. For example, while it may seem odd to find opportunity in the nexus between gaming and biopharma, seeing is believing.Data and visualization by Sean Gourley of Quid; graphic design by Open

gaming social media

genomicsbiopharma

ad targeting

Idea watch

Harvard Business Review March 2011

Vision Statement

2This article is made available to you with compliments of FM Global Insurance.

Further posting, copying, or distributing is copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www.hbr.org or call 800-988-0886.

Semantic-clustering software locates and analyzes the documents in a company’s digital footprint.

Documents are catego-rized and weighted for importance.

The software then identifies the company’s n-grams, or key phrases.

The company’s n-grams are then compared with other companies’ n-grams.

The process is then repeated for every company in the sample to generate the map.

When at least 80% of their n-grams are similar, companies are linked on the map.

how N-Gram Mapping works

showed capital growth last year.

Such maps expose surprising relationships between and across sectors and, even more tantalizing, the white spaces among them—which can offer firms strategic opportunities to connect companies operat-ing in different markets, to take existing products into new sectors, or to innovate with products and services no one has even dreamed up yet. 

hBR Reprint F1103Z

The Pharma-Gaming Connection One of the most intriguing white spaces on this map is surrounded by some industry sectors that at first glance may seem unlikely to be connected: biopharma, gaming, social media, and ad targeting. As shown in the box below, Selventa, Proximic, Vivo, Insilicos, Foldit, and Nvidia are some of the ventures seizing the strategic opportunities in this space.

Sean Gourley is CTO and cofounder

of Quid, in San Francisco. Open is a design studio in New York.

Nvidia

Foldit

Vivo Selventa

InsilicosProximic

gamingsocial media

genomicsbiopharma

ad targeting

Profiling and Per-sonalized Medicine Selventa makes targeted drug discoveries by analyzing large amounts of patient data and statistically identify-ing patient cohorts that will respond well to special-ized treatments. To do so it borrows mathematical techniques from ad targeting companies like Proximic.

Gaming Meets Drug Discovery Nvidia builds graphics pro-cessing units used in video games, among other things. Recognizing that work done by biomarker discovery and diagnostic development companies like Insilicos requires similarly intense graphics processing, Nvidia has edged into the drug discovery space.

Solving Business Problems Socially Foldit is an online social game for science geeks based on the challenge of finding the most efficient way to fold proteins. But the thousands who play it can help solve real protein- folding challenges for bio pharma companies, which have begun putting the gaming platform to work.

Scientific Social Networking Vivo jumped into the white space between social gaming and pharma by building a Facebook-like online collabo-ration platform that helps scientists connect and share research and data.

March 2011 Harvard Business Review 3

22

FoR aRtIcle RepRInts call 800-988-0886 oR 617-783-7500, oR vIsIt hBr.org

This article is made available to you with compliments of FM Global Insurance. Further posting, copying, or distributing is copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www.hbr.org or call 800-988-0886.