white space n. an under-served business market or undeveloped product category. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Astronauts returning from space say they experience what’s called the overview effect, a new understanding of the fragility of our planet and our need to reflect on what humans all share as a species. A book about the end of the universe...
Asthenosphere, a geologist’s term for the molten layer beneath the earth’s crust, sparks a journey that stretches all the way from ancient Greece to the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Plus: What the heck is a dogberg? It’s when...
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.”
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.