Innovation: The Fourth "I" for a Smarter Planet
At recent IBM events (Pulse and Impact, both in Las Vegas), the theme of an instrumented, interconnected, intelligent world was reinforced. Their emphasis is consistent with my own work over the last decade, and I applaud their efforts wholeheartedly. There is, however, a need for a fourth "I" - Innovation - on the part of vendors and users alike, to ensure that the smarter world we are building is the one we really want.
Preliminary Maturity Model for a Citiplex
A few weeks ago I thought about the idea of creating peer groups of cities that band together to share ideas, data, and ultimately analytics to make them smarter individually and collectively. I was inspired by the work IBM is doing in Dubuque, and later by what I saw at the Smarter Cities event in NYC.Tonight, I started to think about what the connections between these cities might look like and how the collaboration process might evolve. I decided that I should post a draft model and open it up for discussion rather than wait until I had a fully baked, hence this note. (You can register for the site and respond, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it me, or catch me on Twitter)
I'll use the term citiplex to refer to such a community of cities, with similarities in several of the following basic properties:
o Population size (similar educational, safety and healthcare issues)
o Population density (similar housing and transportation issues)
o Climate (energy requirements)
o Natural resources (agricultural potential, energy sources...)
o Government (easier for culturally similar groups to make a conscious effort to share)
At first, it may appear that the more that is shared the better. However, I believe that nature teaches us the value of diversity, so I'd like to see several such citiplexes emerge for each global peer group, and learn from each other without creating too many dependencies (fault tolerance is important for operational continuity and safety).
SIG Notes
