From ancient Babylon to Ptolemy, fromMercator to Google Maps, the process ofmapping the world has represented one ofthe greatest technological achievementsof humanity.

We have come a long way since the earli-est atlases, with a GPS system in nearly eve-ryone’s pockets. And yet, despite having asatellite’s perspective of the planet at ourfingertips, the challenge of addressing theworld remains a stubbornly difficult prob-lem to solve.

Even in developed western cities, thecombination of smartphones and street ad-dresses can lead us astray with surprisingfrequency.

As for the approximately four billion liv-ing in the 135 or so mostly developing coun-

tries that the UN says lack a properly func-tioning addressing system, and particular-ly for the nearly 900 million or so people inthe rapidly expanding favelas and infor-mal urban settlements across the world,the challenge is infinitely greater.

“One of the biggest preconceptions isthat the world is well-addressed,” saysGiles Rhys Jones, the marketing directorof What3Words, a three-year-old Britishstart-up that has devised an ingenious solu-tion to the problem. “But actually, whenyou look at it, it’s quite poorly addressed.”

While latitude and longitude co-ordi-nates can accurately pinpoint any locationon the planet, the strings of numbers andcharacters are not exactly designed withhuman users in mind.

Chris Sheldrick, the founder ofWhat3Words, repeatedly experiencedthat first-hand when running a large-scalemusic events company, which involvedmoving equipment from location to loca-tion, and the seemingly basic issue of get-ting things from place to place became a re-curring nightmare.

TackleafreshFrustrated by the logistical problems, Shel-drick and a mathematician friend began totackle the issue afresh. The surface area ofEarth is about 510.1 million km²; if youbreak it down into 3m x 3m squares, youget about 57 trillion squares. Most previ-ous attempts at geocoding locations haveused a purely mathematical approach, but

Sheldrick and his friend came upon theidea of using words, which are more easilymemorised by people than strings of num-bers.

Using the most common 40,000 wordsin English in combinations of three createssome 64 trillion combinations, more thanenough to denote every 3m² on the planet.

They developed an algorithm to random-ly allocate three word combinations forevery part of the planet, down to a veryhigh resolution.

Using the What3Words system for theIrish Times building on Tara Street in Dub-lin, then, instead of a lat-long co-ordinateof 53°20’45.5”N 6°15’17.4”W, you get a farmore usable three-word address of“stocks.employ.rests”.

“We’ve put shorter more memorablewords in places that speak that language.We have taken out homophones, rudewords – there’s a lot of work put in to theword list,” says Rhys Jones.

“We’ve also put similar sounding wordsreally far apart, to avoid issues you canhave with lat-long or other systems: if I putin table chair lamp instead of table chairlamps, one is in America and the other is inAustralia. It’s a built-in error detectionthat both human and system can see. It is avery simple concept to understand, but un-derneath there is a lot of stuff going on. Isay index. home. raft, and in under five sec-onds I have given you a very precise squareon the planet that you can understand.

“It is a user-friendly version of co-ordi-nates.”

The concept isn’t restricted to English,of course – What3 Words currently worksin 10 languages, with another 15 in develop-ment. And best of all, the entire systemtakes up just 10mb or so of space, meaningit can easily be downloaded on to a smart-phone or GPS device.

It is so conceptually simple that it makesthe ¤38 million spent on the controversialEircode system here seem like an evenmore astonishing amount of money to es-

tablish a postcode system that nobodyuses.

“Generally around the world, poor ad-dressing causes three things,” says RhysJones. “First frustration for people. Then,massive business inefficiencies – UPS havesaid that if they can save each of their driv-ers one mile a day, that’s a $50 million sav-ing for them. And then you get the more sig-nificant stuff – if aid doesn’t get deliveredto the right places, if disease outbreakscan’t be monitored, if slums and informalsettlements can’t be addressed, actuallythat costs lives.”

Rhys Jones says that What3 Words is al-ready in use by postal services in favelas inBrazil that were previously enormously dif-ficult to deliver post to, as well as aid agen-cies, such as one in Tanzania tracking chol-era outbreaks.

Later this year, An Garda Síochána willbe testing What3Words to assist eventplanning and security at events such as theploughing championships.

The What3Words business model relieson licensing the underlying APIs to busi-nesses, such as courier companies, whocan incorporate the technology into theirproducts, and last year it completed a $3.4million second round of financing from In-tel Capital. Ultimately, the goal is to bebuilt in to established mapping platformssuch as Google Maps.

“We’re unashamedly on a mission tochange the world, and to do that we wantto be a globally accepted standard for an ad-dress,” says Rhys Jones.

“It is about democratising addressing.There are four billion people in the worldthat don’t have an address, and now theyhave a way to talk about where they live.”

DavinO’Dwyer

Freelancing and the so-called gig economyhas been on the rise now for a long time.Freelancers’ Union, a United States organi-sation, says that a quarter of the Americanworkforce are now project-based workers,while Accenture estimates up to 30 percent of the total workforce falls outside thetraditional full-time permanent relation-ship.

There at least five good reasons why or-ganisations use agile talent: leveraging theincreased availability of people, reducingcosts, avoiding adding permanent head-count, increasing the speed of gettingthings done, and challenging the organisa-tions’ thinking and assumptions with out-side ideas.

As this book by two senior figures fromthe management consulting firm RBLnotes, as competition accelerates and inno-vators disrupt, the need for expertise ontap continues to expand. Far from beingcheap and disposable, much of this humancapital is comprised of highly trained andvaluable expertise.

The term “cloud resourcing” is used inthis context with its obvious similarities tothe way information technology resourcescan be accessed on an “on demand” basis.

There are clear advantages but thereare also challenges. In a recent survey, 50per cent of IT department heads reportedfrustrations with service partners, claim-ing promises of high touch and attentionwere inconsistent with the reality once con-tracts were signed. Goals can be unrealis-tic, flexibility not as great as expected andcosts can mount unexpectedly as new ser-vices are added. Some 25 per cent of out-sourcing relationships die within twoyears; only 50 per cent survive five years.

One reason suggested here for this attri-tion is too often purchasing departmentsmake the selection decision while operat-ing managers – excluded from that deci-sion process – are nonetheless expected tomake the relationship work. Purchasingwants the lowest price and a fixed cost,whereas operations want the best re-source, a good cultural fit and enough flexi-bility in the contract to allow for changes inscope or strategy. Insiders can feel threat-

ened by exter-nal talent andconsultantsdon’t always un-derstand thenuances andpolitics of or-ganisations.External tal-ent has issuestoo, often be-moaning theslow, com-plex and bu-reaucraticway organi-sationswork.

Viewingexternaltalent as

“separate and not equal”is not a strategy that will work anymoreand, according to the authors, this is thekey to successfully managing these rela-tionships. In their research, they havefound the organisations that get the mostfrom their agile talent are those that usedthe most effective techniques in engaging,motivating and building teams.

Too often these external individuals,however, feel merely tolerated or viewedwith suspicion by employees while at thesame time feeling unappreciated by man-agement and powerless in dealing with theadministrative bureaucracy of the organi-sation.

AlignmentcriteriaFour key success factors are identified.The first is strategic alignment. Is the or-ganisation disciplined enough to identifywhere agile talent and cloud resourcingare beneficial, and does the work have theright level of sponsorship, budget andtime? The second is performance align-ment. Are performance expectations de-fined, established and communicated?

Then there’s relationship alignmentwhich relates to cultural fit being as impor-tant as technical expertise. The final factoris administrative alignment, which consid-ers whether the organisation is set up towork well with externals or whether ittreats them badly. The book contains toolsto test your organisation’s alignmentacross these criteria and recommenda-tions about how to address each area.

The authors also suggest we are enter-ing an era in which organisations will re-cruit external partners in a similar fashionto their internal management hires andthat the HR function will play a major rolein attracting, engaging and building rela-tionships with high-performing agile tal-ent. Organisations will also invest more inexternal talent orientation to close the cul-tural gaps, especially in situations wherean individual’s talents are exemplary andrare.

This well-researched book will prove in-teresting not only to chief executives andHR leaders, but to the many people now op-erating in the gig economy who will hopethat some of its key messages resonatewith those who employ them.

‘‘

Mapping the world with three littlewords for every location on planet

Innovation

From Cyber Security to the Cloud,the new Thinktechmagazineprovides insights into the fast-paced technology sector.

Available exclusivelyat irishtimes.comfrom Friday 22ndApril 2016.

Thinktech is aspecial magazinesupplementpublished byThe Irish TimesContent Studiofor Grant Thornton.#GTtech

Start-upaimstoeliminateproblemsacrossglobecausedbypooraddressing

Agile Talent: How To SourceAnd Manage Outside Experts

Jon Younger and Norm Smallwood. HarvardBusiness Review Press. ¤29.99 hardback

AnGardaSíochánawillbetestingWhat3Wordstohelpeventplanningandeventsecurity

■ System creators developed analgorithm to randomly allocatethree-word combinations for every threemetre square piece of the planet, downto a very high resolution

BookedFrankDillon

How firms workbest with ‘gigeconomy’ offreelancers

12 THE IRISH TIMESMonday, April 18 , 2016