Industry maps are social network representations of market places within particular industry sectors. Sometimes they can show both buyers and sellers. Other times they might just show the alliance relationships between the sellers or the syndicates of buyers. The power of the network visualization and subsequent analysis is the business or competitive intelligence that it can afford, often uncovering hidden opportunities or threats.

Unlike traditional social network analysis, industry networks are mostly built through data or text mining. Early attempts at industry maps had been constrained by a lack of data. However today, with advanced search technologies and more comprehensive industry data bases available, the ability to generate more accurate visual representations of a market place have been substantially enhanced.

The maps shown here are divided into industry sectors. They are a collection from our research and consulting over several years. Either Pajek, Netdraw or NetMiner have been used to produce the maps. In most cases the maps shown are filtered versions, where some nodes and links have been removed to help with the visualization. The filtering has either been based on the strength of links if they are valued, or degree centrality, if they are not. We’ve also tried to identify the source data and an interpretation with each map.

Global IT Industry Map