white space

n. an under-served business market or undeveloped product category. Subjects: English, Business, Jargon

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Citations: 1989 Computing (U.K.) (July 27) “Resellers feel pinch as DEC tightens belt” p. 11: “Hamilton and ADL have provided extra competition, while Snergy has gone for niche markets,” he said. DEC’s green and white space policy meant that Rapid had to move into a different market area. “We were strong in green space,” Dunne explained, “so we had to cut a market in white space which has taken us a long time.” 1993 Christopher Lorenz Financial Times (U.K.) (Oct. 15) “Management—Avoiding The IBM Trap” p. 18: A group of 150 people were handpicked for what he and Alberthal call “their ability to think outside the box.”…They were broken into five “waves” of 30, focusing on different issues…a search for “white space” (uncontested new competitive areas). 2004 Diane Stafford Kansas City Star (Kan., Mo.) (Nov. 23) “Increased pay gets devoured by inflation”: White space—a high-growth or unserved market or outside-the-box business opportunity. 2004 Mary Lou Roberts iSeries Network (U.S.) (Dec. 7) “Will Pennsylvania Casinos Gamble on the iSeries?”: Just about everyone in the iSeries community agrees that the key to survival of the platform is growth in new business opportunities—the “white space” as the hardware vendors refer to it. Let’s hope that the iSeries ISVs and resellers will fill that white space with slot machines.

Posted 8 Dec 04 | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Reader comments:

Doesn’t “white space” derive from 18/19C Euro-American maps of the world, white being the designation for uncolonized/uncivilized? See for example the beginning of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness where Marlowe remembers being a young adventurous boy looking at a map in which parts of Africa appear “a blank space of delightful mystery—a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over.”

by jchurch 21 Dec 04, 0849 GMT

I don’t know about “derive” since “white space” or “blank space” in a non-jargon sense is a common enough term. I don’t think either can be said to be a term of art for cartography. Here, though, I think we are dealing with a very specific piece of jargon which is well beyond, say, “white space” as an artist’s tool, and is clearly and specifically a term of art.

by Grant Barrett 21 Dec 04, 0857 GMT