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Gerry Mooney, General Manager, IBM Global Smarter Cities
Smarter Cities 2.0: The Next Wave.
Much of the growth in new markets comes from the entrepreneurial companies who are building the new applications.
IBM is an integrator. In the Smarter Planet sphere, the integrator can take new technologies and services to market more quickly than the startups can. So IBM has a strategy of forming partnerships with innovative startups, and, in some cases, buying them.
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Steve Hamm in
By now, just about any city with a progressive outlook has conducted an open data apps contest–inviting hackers to create applications that make life better there. But Dublin, Ireland, is putting other places to shame. Next year, its HACK THE CITY exhibition and festival will present a slew of events, workshops, installations, and mass-participation experiments aimed at exploring ways to make cities work better. “We want to leave an imprint that inspires people to think differently about how we could an should live in cities,” says Teresa Dillon, curator for the festival at Science Gallery, an initiative of Trinity College Dublin.
The Galley has been gathering applications from software hackers, artists, community activists, engineers and urban planners who want to participate by producing installations, performances, workshops, apps, etc. The call for proposals closes January 20, but Dillon says it’s not too late to get started on a proposal and urges people with innovative ideas to bring them forward. Find out more here.
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Kerrie Holley wasn’t shocked when he viewed the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans with their derelict buildings and empty lots. He had grown up in a poor section of Chicago in the 1960s. But the lingering evidence of a city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina combined with the optimism and determination of the people reinforced his resolve to help them fulfill the city’s potential. “I hope people will see it as one of the great cities in the world and that more people will migrate there,” he says.
Holley was a member of a team of five IBMers who spent three weeks in New Orleans in September as part of the company’s Smarter Cities Challenge program. New Orleans leaders had asked for an assessment and advice on how to use technology to make the city run better. The IBM team responded with a package of recommendations for how the city can better gather, integrate and manage information about everything from crime statistics to city services. They delivered the formal report to New Orleans this week.
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When Chris and Carolyn Clemans moved 2 1/2 years ago from a suburb of Syracuse, New York, to the city’s gritty Near West Side, they were among the first urban pioneers to join an effort to revitalize one of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Today, a dozen formerly rundown homes in the vicinity have been fixed up by new owners and the neighborhood seems to be on its way to a surprising comeback.
The Clemans run a custom cabinetry business, Cabinet Fabrication Group, in a small downtown factory within walking distance of their home–so they’re betting their future on Syracuse. There are several factors in the Near West Side’s change of fortunes, but the key one, according to Chris, is that the new residents have changed the culture of the neighborhood. “Criminals are more comfortable operating in an area where people tolerate them. We don’t tolerate them,” he says.
The unwillingness of residents to accept criminal or even nuisance behavior is one of the key factors in determining whether an urban neighborhood can be stabilized or make a comeback, according to research conducted by a team of five IBMers who performed a deep analysis of Syracuse’s housing vacancy issues this fall. The team is part of IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge program–where the company sends teams to help cities worldwide assess and solve some of their most challenging problems. The Syracuse team recently presented a report laying out their findings and recommendations to municipal leaders. Their message: Armed with accurate information that correlates causes and effects, the city can craft successful strategies for revitalizing neighborhoods.
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Some argue that in this era of austerity, the US government can no longer afford to launch bold new programs aimed at making the country work better. Not so. But it’s true that big projects have to be approached differently. These days, government needs to work collaboratively with businesses, universities and community organizations to get big stuff done and boost the dynamism of the US economy.
Today, IBM is convening a conference, US Competitiveness: the Next 100 Years, to generate ideas for rekindling America’s competitiveness in the years ahead. For live blogging from the event, check in between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Please Tweet to #uscompetes.
The latest:
4:45 p.m. Close – Jonathan Fanton, Roosevelt House Fellow:
“A vision of a fair, just and humane society will advance our economic gains, if we can achieve it.”
We can’t count on government alone or industries to carry the burden of our reinvention.
We’re at an inflection point. All of us need to think differently We need to take responsibility for coming up with fresh thoughts for making our economy more vital.
“It’s individual initiative we have to find ways to unleash.”
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By Bridget van Kralingen
General Manager, IBM, North America
Two months ago, IBM announced plans to invest $3.6 billion over the next five years in New York to extend our leadership in semiconductor technology. Investments will be made in our East Fishkill chip fabrication plant and at Albany Nanotech, a strategic collaboration of New York, SUNY Albany, IBM and other technology companies aimed at creating the next generations of computer chip technologies. New York is investing $400 million and other corporations are chipping in another $400 million. The investments are expected to preserve or create 6,900 high-tech jobs in the state.
The alliance between IBM and New York, which blossomed into Albany Nanotech, stands out as a model for economic development and job creation in the 21st century. The state, the university and the technology companies involved all have their parochial interests, but they also have interests in common, and they find that by combining their efforts and sharing resources they can accomplish things that they could not achieve on their own.
If the United States is to remain competitive globally, it’s vital for government, business and educational leaders to reach beyond their comfort zones and forge strategic alliances that cross societal boundaries to get important things done.
(Today, IBM is convening a conference, US Competitiveness: the Next 100 Years, to generate strategies for rekindling America’s competitiveness in the years ahead. The event will be held at Roosevelt House in New York City. For live blogging from the event, check in between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. on the 8th. Please Tweet to #uscompetes.)
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In 1933, when President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was recruiting former social worker Frances Perkins to be US secretary of labor, he invited her to his Manhattan house to discuss her policy ideas. One of the key items on her agenda was what she described as an “old age” insurance program. Roosevelt encouraged her to study the idea. Two years later the social Social Security Act was legislated by Congress.
Since then, Social Security has stood as one of the bedrocks of the American economy and a vital element of the country’s global competitiveness. Americans can rest assured that if they work hard and play by the rules, they won’t suffer severe privation in old age. It gives every worker a stake in the country’s success.
The Social Security Act was one of the bold strokes by government that helped define America’s place in the world in the 20th century—along with the Marshall Plan, the space program, the Peace Corps and the Internet.
Some people argue that in this era of austerity, government can no longer afford to launch bold new programs aimed at making the world work better. Not so. But it’s true that big projects have to be approached differently. These days, government needs to work collaboratively with businesses, universities and community organizations to get big stuff done. Sometimes this collaboration will take the shape of formal public-private partnerships, like when the US government and IBM teamed up to create the technical infrastructure of the Social Security system; other times not.
On Dec. 8, IBM is convening a conference, US Competitiveness: the Next 100 Years, to generate strategies for rekindling America’s competitiveness in the years ahead. The event will be held at Roosevelt House, where the president and Perkins conducted their fateful meeting. For live blogging from the event, check in between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. on the 8th. Please Tweet to #uscompetes.
What if the United States were a business? How would we size up its financial health and its prospects? Mary Meeker, a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, earlier this year explored this intriguing idea in a humongous 477-page slide show, called USA Inc., which was later published as a book. She followed up with a more easily digestible YouTube presentation. In both pieces, her analysis is devastating: If the United States were a business, it would be on the road to going out of business.
Meeker’s work is a call to action that should not be ignored. But, what to do? It strikes me that the United States today bears a strong resemblance to IBM in 1993, when the once-mighty company nearly failed, and that IBM’s turnaround offers insights that could help the country get out of this jam.
IBM survived and now thrives again because it radically changed the way it operates. The new IBM has strong financial discipline, invests for the long term and welcomes collaboration with its clients and even with its competitors. It sees globalization as an opportunity, not a threat. It makes decisions based on facts, not emotions. It’s willing to change everything about itself except its core beliefs. And it’s committed to engaging in a continuous process of renewal. If you will, it’s becoming a smarter organization.
In the early 1990s, IBM had a near-death experience. This was a stunning moment in business history because the company had dominated the computer industry practically ever since there was a computer industry. IBM nearly collapsed because its leaders failed to recognize that the mainframe computing model the company had pursued for 40 years was out of date, they were inattentive to clients’ needs and they spent a lot of energy competing amongst themselves.
The parallels with the US today are obvious. The country rose to world dominance based on post-World War II economic advantages, a wealth of natural resources, tremendous military power and a dynamic entrepreneurial spirit. Today, its military and economic strategies are out of date, its natural resources have been depleted, the government isn’t meeting the needs of citizens for jobs and economic opportunities, and many elected leaders are focused primarily on defeating their rivals in elections rather than creating innovative solutions to solve the country’s deep and complex problems.
By Bettina Tratz-Ryan
Analyst
Gartner Inc.
Check out the Gartner blog, where this post was originally published.
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Smarter Cities event hosted by IBM in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. My first experience was a visit to Rio’s Operations Center, built by the city and IBM as part of the city’s urbanization strategy to integrate 30 different agencies that manage the city and citizen’s services. IBM has built the first stage of the operations center as an infrastructure platform with the information management capabilities available. Each city has the ability to integrate those capabilities around their specific requirements of process alignment and data integrity. By building this center for Rio, IBM is moving its previously fully customized delivery of the smart city framework into a platform and service solutions model.
The operations center is focused in its core to provide a comprehensive emergency response system, implement crime prevention, detect and handle utility outages and traffic issues, resulting in safety and revitalization of different sections of the city. What I saw was equivalent to Mission Control Center NASA, a large wall full of different control screens, with feeds from over 400 video cameras and other sensors, as well as a map, with infrastructure outages and remediation activities. Operators from the different agencies were monitoring the screens, and based on the different scenarios, applied the appropriate standard operating procedures that determine activities and processes between the different agencies. What was really amazing though was the fact that, at this point, none of the operators really worked with the full capability of the integrated processes and data flows that proactively share and consolidate information between the agencies. Still, the center worked like clockwork.
By Eric Bloom
Research Analyst
Pike Research
Check out the Pike Research blog, where this post was originally published.
At the IBM Smarter Cities forum in Rio de Janeiro last week, I had the chance to go behind the scenes and take a first-hand look at Rio’s smart city project. My main impression is that the project represents one of the purest emerging examples of a smart city project that is simultaneously developing smart solutions on multiple fronts – natural disaster management, public safety, health, utilities, to mention a few – and is starting to achieve a true “system of systems” – nirvana in smart city terms. This level of integration and interoperability across city agencies – and the successes Rio has had so far – bodes well for the smart city opportunity not only in emerging markets but worldwide.
The City of Rio de Janeiro has accomplished this by deploying smart technologies ranging from broad, continental-scale weather tracking down to mobile device-enabled notification systems for potholes and burnt-out streetlights. The centerpiece, of course, is the Rio Operations Center, which features Latin America’s largest screen and dozens of stations that provide visualizations of real-time data feeds. Within the center, 35 city agencies work together to synergize their responses to city events. (One interesting detail is that the operators wear uniforms modeled after NASA that create a sense of camaraderie and homogeneity across the historically separate city agencies, which creates something of a spectacle.)
