At my company, Azavea, we create software and data analytics that help people see the bigger picture. Data about how buildings in Philadelphia are using energy can help companies all over America fight climate change. Public information about preschools in Chicago can be the basis for a simple application that helps people find local early-learning centers. Computer vision techniques applied to satellite imagery can detect changes in shipping and fishing activity.

I also try to see the bigger picture when it comes to running my company. Azavea’s mission is focused on both social impact and advancing the state of the art through research. Our business model is to take existing data sets and find novel ways to help people glean useful information from them. That requires a lot of creativity, but how do you help a comparatively small workforce find the time for that kind of flexible thinking when everyone has lots of tasks they need to accomplish every day?