DeepMap CTO Mark Wheeler Presents at Harvard Business School
Our CTO Mark Wheeler recently joined students at the Harvard Business School for a session of the course Digital Transformation of Business, taught by Professor Shane Greenstein. The topic of the class was DeepMap: Charting the Road Ahead for Autonomous Vehicles, an HBS case study on DeepMap authored by Prof. Greenstein and Nicole Tempest Keller.
The lively class discussion focused on analyzing DeepMap use cases across robotaxis, last mile delivery, long-haul trucking, and mining/agriculture.
Prof. Greenstein encouraged the students to deliberate about DeepMap’s value proposition in the autonomous driving ecosystem, as well as challenges — such as how to determine which partners to work with first.
He asked students to describe DeepMap’s most distinctive features as a company. The students pointed out DeepMap’s SaaS model as well as the ability for customers to own their own mapping data.
Following the discussion, Mark Wheeler answered students’ questions and updated them on progress DeepMap has made since the case study was written.
Key points from the case study:
- Self-driving is not just a technology challenge. It’s also an economic challenge, an infrastructure challenge, a public safety challenge, and a marketing challenge.
- Potential applications span across personal transportation, trucking, robotaxi services, and much more. The way self-driving technology is implemented will differ from application to application.
- There are also geospatial uncertainties: will the technology be used on city streets or on highways? What type of road conditions will the technology be used in?
- Geographically, which countries will adopt the technology first, and what regulations will help or hinder the adoption?
- DeepMap is betting big on the trend towards a self-driving future. The company firmly believes mapping is critical for increased safety and reliability, at an affordable cost.
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About DeepMap: DeepMap is accelerating safe autonomy by providing the world’s best autonomous mapping and localization solutions. DeepMap delivers the technology necessary for self-driving vehicles to navigate in a complex and unpredictable environment. The company addresses three important elements: precise high-definition (HD) mapping, ultra-accurate real-time localization, and the server-side infrastructure to support massive global scaling. DeepMap was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., with offices in Beijing and Guangzhou, China. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, GSR Ventures, Generation, Goldman Sachs, NVIDIA, and Robert Bosch Venture Capital. For more information, see www.deepmap.ai.
