Who is Simon Wardley? And how can he help your business?

Topographical maps have been essential throughout history in helping communicate location, identify resources, and dictate movement across physical landscapes for centuries. Simon Wardley is an expert in a different kind of mapping — the kind that helps businesses to succeed in a shifting landscape of technology and value. It’s through these strategies that Wardley has revolutionised how businesses map their processes, in order to create more effective and efficient business structures.

Simon Wardley is the head of Wardley Maps, which helps advise clients to predict market trends and anticipate outcomes.

His original training is in genetics and maths, but he's spent the last 15 years defining future IT strategies for companies in the FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods), Retail and IT industries, including Canon and Ubuntu.

A few of his published works include Clash of the Titans — Will China Dethrone Silicon Valley? and The Future is More Predicable Than You Think — A Workbook for Value Chain Mapping – which exemplify Wardley's vast knowledge, his depth of experience in IT strategy on the corporate level, and his fascination with helping companies to beneficially anticipate change.

He uses his work to help businesses in several areas, including

• minimizing risk and conflict in business settings and practices,
• increasing the use of IT as a guide to business strategy and a way to reduce costs,
• increasing collaboration between groups in business under the same blanket of data and strategies, and
• aiding in strategizing and communications at the senior corporate level.

There’s a reason that Wardley Maps has become so successful, and why Computer Weekly named Simon among their top 50 most influential people in IT in 2011 and 2012.

If you'd like to get started with Wardley Maps, here's a link to a workbook: The Future is More Predictable Than You Think - A Workbook for Value Chain Mapping.

We're going to look more closely at Wardley's Value Maps in coming weeks and his Pioneer-Settler-Town Planner concept.

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(Photograph © 2019 Pınar Özger)