Organizational Reconnaissance
It is my firm conviction that many exploratory moves are preceded by a cognitive investigation of the environment. I call this process Organizational Reconnaissance. Researchers looking up prior literature, workers looking for jobs, organizations expanding an existing business, and many other actors have this in common. Most of my research focuses on the case of competitor identification for new venture concepts.
In the broadest terms, this is done by navigating the cognitive infrastructure of categories. In an ideal world, categories would operate as a market interface that makes the process simple. Graduate from college with an X degree, apply to X jobs. Want to start a Y business, research companies in the Y industry. This is not what I mean by "navigating," and this is not how things work.
I have built an information portal to observe the process of competitor identification for venture concepts. I can already say that actors hold very different mental maps of the industries where competitors of a given venture can be found. Searchers gravitate toward items typical of the searched category and location. And what searchers find is likely to change the original intention of the reconnaissance. Explore the research.
No one needs convincing that perceptions of competition matter. Substantial research shows that cognitive maps of competition look nothing like an abstract representation of the industry. While the process of building these maps is rarely observed, their shape is usually explained by a history of market clashes and social contacts. But what about novel ventures? Are entrepreneurs confined to areas where they have personal expertise? That would be a very static economy, far from what we actually observe.
So how do entrepreneurs and other actors do this? Social networks research seems to provide the answer. Scientists are more likely to collaborate with colleagues who attended the same conference, and workers are more likely to apply to a company where a friend works. But again, this is an overly static picture. Does no one ever browse job boards or Google Scholar? And if they do, how do they do it?
In the broadest terms, this is done by navigating the cognitive infrastructure of categories. In an ideal world, categories would operate as a market interface that makes the process simple. Graduate from college with an X degree, apply to X jobs. Want to start a Y business, research companies in the Y industry. This is not what I mean by "navigating," and this is not how things work.
I have built an information portal to observe the process of competitor identification for venture concepts. I can already say that actors hold very different mental maps of the industries where competitors of a given venture can be found. Searchers gravitate toward items typical of the searched category and location. And what searchers find is likely to change the original intention of the reconnaissance. Explore the research.
How I Got Here
Before my PhD, I worked as a freelance researcher for a large technology company, helping build a new online education platform for programmers. The task sounded simple. Use job-board data to describe the field's specializations.
But the first question turned out to be the hard one. What counts as a specialization? The boundaries I drew would shape which skills people chose to learn, where they applied, and how they labeled themselves. I was drawing the map they would later use to search the field.
I did not have the vocabulary for it then, but that was my introduction to the questions I now study. Categories are instruments that structure how people search a market.