Designed and delivered in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh annually in the 2014-2023 academic years.
The Business Geographics course was devised at the request of Bruce Gittings – External Relations Co-ordinator for the School of GeoSciences’ MSc GIS programme – who felt that students would benefit from a better understanding of how GISystems and GIScience could be used commercially.
The course – named after Business Geographics Limited, the company Adrian had co-founded in 1993 and run until 2000 – was wide ranging with learning outcomes enabling students to:
- Understand typical UK private sector Company structures, ownership and governance characteristics.
- Consider different models of shareholder ownership and professional responsibilities within business (and analogies within government/third-sector) through group work.
- Set up a new business (Limited Company) or partnership (LLP), understanding rules and reporting responsibilities.
- Understand the value of different types of geographic information in various settings and consider ways to exploit its use.
- Consider how and why ethics and professionalism are important, whether as an internal or external GIS Expert or Consultant.
- Project plan a number of GI solutions involving open source, public sector and other types of geographic data.
- Appreciate the future opportunities for use/analysis of geographic information as it gets ‘bigger’, potentially more ‘open’ and certainly more pervasive.
- Develop communication, management and interactive skills relevant to different types of organisational structure and service delivery mechanism.
- Locate, read and summarise relevant literature, from both traditional and online media, to extend understanding of topics.
- Take responsibility for learning through reading and the preparation of assignments, reflecting upon the learning experience.
The Unit Handbook for Business Geographics, including selected references etc., is shown below.
Colleagues at academic institutions interested in the original PowerPoint slides and bibliographic database may make contact to request access.
Businesses, government departments, third sector organisations etc. may wish to explore consultancy options.