Unlike any other time in history, businesses and consumers now have access to geographical tools, social media platforms and mobile devices for sharing vast amounts of data at an unprecedented pace. Leveraging these location services offers businesses new ways to identify, engage and capitalize on previously overlooked economic geographies of opportunity, giving rise to a new geo-social economy that spans the globe, yet directly impacts local markets.

As a former auditor for Coopers and Lybrand, I was destined to develop a co-dependent relationship with crunching numbers and spreadsheets. Financial analysis is synonymous with long, tedious Excel spreadsheets, pivot tables, and forecasting models. I have been fortunate enough to apply finance and accounting skills across manufacturing, insurance, real estate, recycling, food service, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries over the last twenty years. Along the way, moving from auditor to financial analyst, to business development executive, to Controller, across every phase of the business cycle from start-up to Fortune 1000, the spreadsheet has been my best friend and nemesis.

Executive level officers within an organization —CEO, CFO, CMO, CTO, CIO, COO—all bring specific skills to operate a business. These skills include at a minimum organizational management, budgeting and finance, technology, sales and marketing, and industry knowledge, as well as the ability to leverage operational, customer, and marketing data. Most successful executives are good at knowing how to extract, analyze and act upon that data; after all, these executives learned it either in business school or on the job.

Sensors are pervasive: in space, in the air, on our streets, in our cars, in our homes, in our businesses. One estimate suggests that by 2010 there will be thousands of operational sensors for every human on the planet! At the same time, there is an increasing demand for better real-time information for use in critical economic, environmental, sustainability, traffic, emergency, military and many other applications. Sensors and web-accessible sensor networks can provide much of this information. Therefore, effective and timely integration of sensor observations into business and policy decisions is imperative.