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By Michael D. King
Vice President, IBM Global Education
Education is the foundation of any country’s future. It provides a path to good jobs and higher earning power. It can also foster the cross-border, cross-cultural collaboration required to solve the most challenging problems of our time.
One hundred years after the U.S. education system first expanded and transformed to prepare children for a booming industrial economy, a new kind of economy based on services and knowledge-based systems is changing the education landscape again. If we want our children to achieve their potential — and realize the potential of a smarter planet — then school itself needs to get a lot smarter.
IBM has a long legacy in working to improve our school systems. In the mid-90s, then-CEO Lou Gerstner hosted the first of three National Education Summits as part of the company’s Reinventing Education program, which focused on public school reform. Two decades later, IBM is at the forefront of developing the deep analytics technologies that are poised to radically transform the way we approach education and the insight we have into each and every student.
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“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” Mark Twain
Today, IBM announced the 33 cities that will participate this year in its Smarter Cities Challenge grant program. This marks the second year in a three-year, $50 million, 100-city initiative. IBM sends five- or six-person teams of experts in a range of disciplines to help cities formulate strategies for improving the quality of life for their citizens.
By now, IBM has amassed a wealth of knowledge about how to help cities get started on transformational projects. Last year, the company engaged with 25 cities around the world, including St. Louis in the United States, Glasgow in the United Kingdom, Chiang Mai in Thailand and Johannesburg in South Africa. The previous year, they ran test programs in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Katowice, Poland; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Chengdu, China; and elsewhere. The themes of the projects ranged from education, transportation and to public safety to energy and sustainable economic development. Here’s a post on the Citizen IBM blog from Stephen Mandel, the mayor of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, about the engagement there.
After each engagement, IBM’s Corporate Citizenship team identifies lessons learned. The exercise is partly aimed at improving the program itself, but the team also gleans insights that could help any leader in any city launch an initiative aimed at fundamentally transforming an aspect of how the city works. Here are some of the most critical lessons for leaders:
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By Kui Kinyanjui
IBM East Africa
Six months ago, the city of Nairobi, Kenya, was rocked by an explosion that left over 100 people dead. The cause: residents had scooped oil from a broken pipeline, hoping to later sell the product on the black market. The oil accidentally ignited, setting off the explosion.
The city was sent into turmoil. A power outage hindered efforts to communicate and rescue victims. Traffic was backed up, making rescue efforts even more difficult as emergency medical personnel battled against time to get to the victims. The water supply in the surrounding neighborhoods dwindled to a trickle as fire fighters used up the last drops of the resource to put out the fire.
The explosion and its aftermath show the vulnerabilities of cities when confronted with major disasters. But the situation didn’t have to be so bad. If Nairobi had had a system for managing disasters some of the loss of life and property could have been prevented.
Rio de Janeiro shows the way. The Brazilian city teamed with IBM to create an intelligent operations center, which serves as a model for how cities can improve management of their critical services. The IOC coordinates the activities of more than 30 municipal and state departments plus private utility and transportation companies. “You can imagine the impact that using a city-wide intelligence system would have had on the day of the Nairobi explosion. In seconds, city officials would have known exactly how to respond to the disaster and lives would have been saved” says Tony Mwai, country general manager, IBM East Africa.
Mwai led a roundtable discussion of government services in Africa in Nairobi on October 6, 2011. A white paper summarizing the takeaways from the conference, A Vision of A Smarter City: How Nairobi Can Lead the Way into a Prosperous and Sustainable Future, was published today.
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America’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has plenty of enemies, but the biggest problem with the law isn’t that parts of it, including the individual mandate, have become politically radioactive. The biggest problem is that while the law goes a long way to expand the population of people with health insurance, it doesn’t comprehensively address an even bigger problem–the unsustainable cost of the country’s healthcare system. Here’s a killer factoid for you: it is estimated that by 2018, partly due to the addition of 32 million people to the ranks of the insured, the annual bill for healthcare in the country will swell from $2.5 trillion to $4.3 trillion–or about 20% of GDP.
These facts came to the fore during a panel discussion between five of the top healthcare experts in the country that was conducted by Bloomberg BusinessWeek at its HQ in New York on Jan. 26. Video clips were posted on the publication’s Web site today. (The event was sponsored by IBM, which was why I was invited.)
The title of Bloomberg’s discussion series is “Fix This,” and while it’s clear that fixing the healthcare system will take more than an enlightened group discussion on a Thursday night in New York City, the quality of the expert’s comments pushed me to a firm conviction: The way to fix healthcare is to get the smartest people together from all segments of the system–including government–and call on them to find common ground because the nation’s financial viability depends on it.
Here’s a hopeful message about the potential of healthcare reform from Dan Pelino, General Manager, IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences, who introduces Bloomberg’s video package.
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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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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.)
