Our Take
Obituary collections are memorial work, not business news, but they can surface overlooked technical figures whose contributions still matter to practitioners building location and logistics systems today.
Why it matters
GPS pioneers and logistics innovators built foundational systems that practitioners still depend on. Recognizing the people behind these tools reminds builders that infrastructure longevity often outlasts its original authors.
Do this week
Read the full McKinsey piece this week to identify which technical figures shaped the systems your team depends on, then trace back to their original papers or patents for deeper context.
Five Figures Honored in McKinsey's Latest Memorial Collection
McKinsey Insights has published a new entry in its obituary series, "McKinsey on Lives and Legacies." The collection recognizes five individuals whose work shaped modern systems and industries: a hidden contributor to GPS technology, a cycling champion, a trucking industry innovator, a Hollywood animator, a cable industry pioneer, and a tuberculosis researcher who built laboratory infrastructure.
The piece does not appear to be behind a paywall excerpt, and the full text was not available at fetch time. The titles and professional fields suggest the collection spans multiple sectors: navigation technology, athletics, logistics, entertainment, media, and public health.
Infrastructure Builders Often Disappear from Public Memory
Practitioners who work with GPS, logistics networks, or any layered technical system inherit solutions built by people whose names rarely appear in product docs or engineering blogs. GPS itself is a decades-old government-funded program whose civilian branch still powers everything from ride-hailing to supply-chain tracking. The GPS pioneer in this collection likely contributed during the system's early development, before privatization and widespread deployment.
Similarly, the trucking innovator represents a sector that has undergone continuous operational and technological change. The cable industry pioneer shaped how media distribution works, a choice that indirectly influenced how digital infrastructure evolved. These are not household names, but their fingerprints are on systems practitioners use every day.
Look Beyond Product Docs to Find the Original Builders
When you inherit a system (GPS, a logistics platform, a cable-era network protocol), spend time reading the historical papers and technical decisions made by the original architects. McKinsey's obituary format is designed for reflection, not operational guidance, but it serves a useful function: it reminds teams that the systems they maintain have human origins and often embedded design choices that still constrain or enable what you can build.
For builders in location tech, logistics, or media infrastructure, the full McKinsey collection is worth reading as a reminder of who solved the hard problems first.