Over the past months, Map From Above Ltd. has built a full strategic foundation:

PESTLE & Porter to understand pressures in European aerial surveying.

• SWOT & VRIO to clarify strengths and advantages.
• Segmentation, Value Proposition Canvas & BCG/Ansoff to choose where to play and how to grow in D/A/CH.
• Strategy Canvas & Blue Ocean to pivot from “winning tenders” to “fly once – sell many times” subscriptions.
• Scenario Planning & Financial Forecasting to stress-test that strategy against very different futures and numbers.

The big question now is no longer what to do, but when and in what sequence:

How do we keep aircraft and teams fully utilised this year,
while building the subscription and data-services business that will pay the bills in five years?

To answer this, the management team uses McKinsey’s Three Horizons framework – a simple way to stage initiatives across Horizon 1 (core), Horizon 2 (growth engines), and Horizon 3 (future options) and manage them in parallel.

Tool & Results — McKinsey’s Three Horizons

The Three Horizons framework, first popularised in The Alchemy of Growth, groups strategic initiatives into three categories:

• Horizon 1 – Core business today
  Activities that pay salaries now: existing contracts, proven offers, reliable clients.
• Horizon 2 – Emerging growth
  Initiatives with clear potential in the next 1–3 years but still scaling or being proven.
• Horizon 3 – Options for the future
  Early bets and experiments that may become substantial later – or be consciously stopped.

Crucially, the horizons are not about “now vs later”. A healthy company works on all three at the same time, but with different expectations, metrics, and risk levels.

For Map From Above Ltd., the framework becomes a one-page map of how today’s flying, tomorrow’s subscriptions, and longer-term data ecosystems fit together.

Step 1: Map From Above’s Horizon 1 – Protect and Optimise the Core

Horizon 1 is everything that keeps the engine running over the next 12–18 months.

Core revenue streams

• National and state mapping frameworks in Germany and neighbouring countries. It Is Your Game!+1
• Corridor LiDAR and imagery for rail and energy operators in D/A/CH. It Is Your Game!
• High-accuracy orthophotos and terrain models for engineering primes.

Key priorities in H1

• Maintain high utilisation of aircraft and sensors in each flying season.
• Protect margins through tight planning, fuel/maintenance optimisation, and disciplined change management.
• Strengthen renewals on core framework and corridor contracts.
• Deliver first subscription pilots (e.g. corridor monitoring, 3D city updates) without jeopardising delivery on existing projects.

H1 metrics

• Flight and sensor utilisation (% of available windows used).
• Gross margin per project and per flying hour.
• Renewal rate on frameworks and major client accounts.
• On-time delivery and rework rates.

This horizon anchors cash flow and credibility. Without a stable H1, there is no budget – or management attention – for the other two horizons.

Step 2: Horizon 2 – Scaling Subscriptions and Value-Added Data Services

Horizon 2 contains initiatives that should become meaningful revenue within 1–3 years. They are closer to the core, but not yet “business as usual”.

For Map From Above Ltd., H2 is where the Blue Ocean model becomes real: predictable, subscription-based income from data and assurance, not only from one-off flights. It Is Your Game!+1

H2 growth platforms

1. Corridor Assurance Subscriptions (D/A/CH)
2. • Annual access for rail and energy operators to validated corridor LiDAR and imagery.
   • Bundled with clearance, deformation, and vegetation reports.
   • Delivered via a secure client portal with role-based access.
2. Framework Plus – Data Re-use on National Mapping Projects
3. • Turn one national orthophoto/LiDAR campaign into a multi-client data product for agencies, municipalities, and engineering firms.
   • Create clear licence models and tiers (single-client, multi-client, sector packs).
3. QA & Compliance Services for Partners
4. • “QA-as-a-Service” for drone operators and engineering firms that lack their own certified workflows.
   • Standardised QA packages, certificates, and audit trails for tender submissions.
4. Automation-Enhanced Products
5. • Roll-out of AI-assisted QA dashboards and change-detection products identified in the Ansoff work as product-development moves. It Is Your Game!

H2 management choices

• Resource envelope: Reserve a visible portion of capacity for H2 (for example 20–25 % of BD and product time, 10–15 % of processing).
• Dedicated owners: Each H2 platform has a named “mini-GM” responsible for commercial model, delivery standard, and basic P&L logic.
• Traction metrics, not just revenue:
• • Number of active subscription clients and renewal rate.
  • Annual recurring revenue (ARR) and share of total revenue.
  • Take-up of QA services among partners.

H2 is where Map From Above makes the strategic shift from project pipeline to platform and subscription pipeline.

Step 3: Horizon 3 – Future Options and Bold Bets

Horizon 3 is about optionality – a small set of structured experiments that could shape the company’s position beyond 2030 if they succeed.

Based on Scenario Planning, three forces look particularly uncertain for aerial surveying: the speed of subscription adoption, the strictness of regulation and QA, and the balance between crewed aircraft, UAVs, and public data. It Is Your Game!

Map From Above’s H3 portfolio therefore focuses on options that would be valuable across several scenarios:

1. Multi-Country Data Ecosystems
2. • Designing a model for cross-border data sharing in Central Europe (e.g. corridor datasets that serve multiple infrastructure owners and countries).
   • Early conversations with national mapping agencies, regulators, and potential platform partners.
2. Integrated Digital-Twin Solutions
3. • Prototyping bundles that combine aerial baseline data with partners’ simulation and asset-management tools.
   • Target: smart-city twins, flood-risk models, and long-term infrastructure resilience planning.
3. New Platforms and Capture Models
4. • Trial projects that blend crewed aircraft with UAV swarms or emerging sensor types for complex sites.
   • Assess how Map From Above can remain the assurance and orchestration layer, even when others do more of the raw capture.
4. IP-Centric Business Models
5. • Testing legal and commercial structures for shared IP in “Regulated Reliability” scenarios – for example, data co-ownership with agencies or regulated utilities.

H3 disciplines

• Small budgets, explicit hypotheses, clear stop/go criteria.
• Learning metrics: what did we validate, who engaged, what barriers appeared?
• Quarterly review: keep, pivot, or terminate experiments.

The point is not to gamble the company on H3, but to ensure that in five years’ time there are ready-to-scale options that can move into Horizon 2.

Step 4: Balancing the Three Horizons – One Page, One Conversation

The final step in the Three Horizons exercise is to put everything onto one page and ask three uncomfortable but practical questions:

1. Is H1 over-dominant?
2. • If 95 % of time and budget sits in H1, the company is in harvest mode and risks slow decline.
2. Is H2 under-funded?
3. • If there are many slides but no owners, metrics, or reserved capacity, growth will stay theoretical.
3. Is H3 just wishful thinking?
4. • If H3 is only buzzwords and conference notes, with no small experiments, the company will be surprised by systemic shifts instead of shaping them.

For Map From Above Ltd., the outcome of the workshop is a simple but powerful rule of thumb for the next planning cycle:

• ~65–70 % of management attention and investment to H1 (protect and optimise core contracts).
• ~20–25 % to H2 (scale subscriptions and QA services).
• ~5–10 % to H3 (structured experiments on data ecosystems and digital twins).

This allocation becomes part of the annual budget and quarterly review – not just a one-off workshop output.

Conclusion & 90-Day Action Plan

Strategic Insight:
McKinsey’s Three Horizons framework gives Map From Above Ltd. a time-based structure for everything the company has already defined with PESTLE, SWOT/VRIO, BCG, Ansoff, Blue Ocean, and Scenario Planning. It turns a long list of good ideas into a staged, resourced roadmap.

90-Day Action Plan

1. Run a 2-hour Three Horizons workshop
2. • Participants: MD, Operations/Flight Lead, Data & QA Lead, Sales/Partnerships, Finance.
   • Output: one agreed-upon Three Horizons map with 5–7 initiatives in each horizon.
2. Name owners and metrics per horizon
3. • H1: utilisation, margin, renewal rates.
   • H2: ARR, number of subscription contracts, QA-service uptake.
   • H3: number of experiments, learning milestones achieved.
3. Embed horizons into budgeting and reporting
4. • Tag each major project or initiative with H1/H2/H3 in the internal project list and management reporting.
   • Review horizon balance in every quarterly management meeting.
4. Align communications
5. • Explain the Three Horizons logic to team leaders so they understand why some capacity is reserved for “non-urgent” H2 and H3 work.
   • Integrate the horizon narrative into investor, bank, or partner discussions.
5. Set one visible H2 win
6. • Choose one subscription or QA platform initiative and commit to a concrete milestone within 90 days (e.g. three signed subscription clients or one multi-client framework data deal).

What Matters Most for SMEs

• Do not let Horizon 1 eat everything. Protect capacity and budget for growth and experimentation, even in busy seasons.
• Make Horizon 2 concrete. Platforms, subscriptions, and services need owners, offers, and numbers – not just vision.
• Treat Horizon 3 as a portfolio of options. Small, disciplined experiments today can save you from strategic shocks tomorrow.

Sources to Start Your Own Three Horizons Journey

• McKinsey – Enduring Ideas: The Three Horizons of Growth. McKinsey & Company
• MindTools – Overview of McKinsey’s Three Horizons of Growth model. Mindtools
• It Is Your Game – Free strategy templates and use cases for aerial and land surveying SMEs. It Is Your Game!

Call to Action:
Looking at your own aerial surveying business, which horizon is under-represented right now – keeping today’s contracts healthy, scaling tomorrow’s subscriptions, or building options for a very different future?

Sketch your Three Horizons on one page, and use it as the agenda for your next management meeting.