The early 1990s were formative years for the geographic information systems (GIS) industry. In 1992, GIS was at once established in certain research circles and still novel as a commercial proposition. For policymakers and analysts hoping to trace the sector’s evolution, ISIC 6201—computer programming activities—offers a place to start, but, as always, not the full story. Within this broad code are firms writing every sort of software, from accounting to games to data visualization, and the true GIS pioneers can be difficult to separate from the crowd.
The first step is to assemble a list of all ISIC 6201-registered companies for the relevant geography. In the United States and much of Western Europe, the numbers are significant by 1992. Filtering for GIS specialists, though, means looking for more than just keywords in the registry. Company profiles, trade magazine features, and early software catalogs provide clues. Press releases and product announcements, particularly around big trade shows—URISA, Intergraph’s conferences, or similar gatherings—often named the leading developers or new entrants. Analysts should watch for references to mapping, spatial analysis, “digital cartography,” or “location-based services,” though the terminology was still evolving.
An important signal comes from academic and government research grants. In the early ’90s, a significant share of GIS development was driven by contracts or grants from agencies like the US National Science Foundation, European research councils, or even local planning departments. Many projects spun out new companies or supported existing small firms with targeted R&D funding. Public grant databases, where available, are helpful: tracking which firms received funding, for what projects, and whether the results turned into commercial products. Often, grant recipients would highlight these collaborations in their marketing or technical documentation.
Integrating research funding data with commercial software revenues is a complex task. Some of the early leaders in GIS—ESRI, MapInfo, Intergraph—were private companies, but many of their advances stemmed from collaborations with universities or government agencies. Annual reports, when published, sometimes broke out revenue by product line or at least identified GIS as a growing segment. For smaller firms, and especially for those just starting, revenue data might be limited to industry surveys, market research reports, or the occasional business press article profiling “rising stars” in digital mapping.
A more indirect but still telling approach is to look for citation patterns in academic papers and conference proceedings. Companies whose products are frequently mentioned in research—either as platforms for analysis or as the subject of technical collaboration—are likely to have both scientific credibility and a commercial presence. Similarly, licensing agreements, technology transfer office reports, or patent filings can sometimes be traced back to specific firms.
There are, inevitably, complications. The GIS sector in 1992 was full of hybrid actors: university labs acting as companies, public-private partnerships, even volunteer-driven projects with commercial offshoots. Some companies registered under ISIC 6201 for one product and later pivoted or diversified. Documentation of every decision—how firms were selected, how revenue was estimated, which grants “count”—is essential, as is an honest accounting of the limitations.
What emerges from layering ISIC 6201 firm data with research funding and revenue information is a portrait of a field in motion. The contours are jagged: a handful of large players, many more startups or spinouts, and a lively interplay between academic innovation and the emerging commercial market. The data, while never complete, are sufficient to map the sector’s early geography, showing how GIS software, once a specialized research tool, began to establish its own commercial identity at the close of the 20th century.