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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To get the most value out of new sources of data, interconnectivity and analytics, cities have to integrate their data and their operations–breaking down the barriers between individual departments. Technology is one of the key tools for integrating this information and these operations.

So IBM has built a platform for integration called the Intelligent Operations Center. “Think of this an analytics hub were we can do high volume real time data analysis, including predictive analytics,” he says.

The idea is to pre-integrate a lot of the pieces of technology in the intelligent operations center. Now IBM is partnering with companies or buying them. One example is i2, a leader in public safety.

We want startups to see this as a development platform they can build upon. Together, we can build a total solution.

We’re also working on integration platforms for other industries, including the financial sector, health care sector, etc.

Here’s a quote he uses frequently when he talks to city leaders about making their cities smarter: “Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we must think!” Sir Winston Churchill.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The plan is to use the entire city of Dublin as a living laboratory for events and experiments. But the scope of the thinking is global. The exhibit will tie in with the Dublin City of Science conference which will bring hundreds of scientists from around the world next July to showcase the latest advances in science, encourage cross-discipline and cross-border collaboration and promote the role of science in society. The HACK THE CITY organizers also hope to take elements of the exhibition on the road in the future to cities around the world, including San Jose, California.

IBM is one of the sponsors of HACK THE CITY and will take the lead in one of the projects–an effort to use technology to develop practical solutions to urban problems. “The idea is to come up with solutions that we can then publish out to the world,” says Martin Kelly, a partner in IBM’s Venture Capital Group.

Science Gallery is an enlightened organization. It’s about promoting science, but it does that by mixing science, technology and art. Approaches like this help create well-rounded individuals and transcendent societies.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

New Orleans has made great strides in its comeback. For instance, the city moved up 44 positions in the ranks of MarketWatch’s Best Cities for Business for 2011, from last place to 33rd. The economic indicators are improving: the city’s unemployment rate beats the national average, personal income growth is high and growth in economic output is above average.

Yet the city’s information technology systems still lag way behind those of most major American cities. Mayor Mitch Landrieu and his staff recognize that fact, and their challenge for the IBM team was to help the city integrate information from its many departments. Today, all of the city’s information is stored in separate technology silos and is hard to access. As a result, if Landrieu is walking in a neighborhood and gets questions from residents about city services, it’s difficult for him to respond with detailed answers.

Holley, who is an IBM Fellow and is chief technology officer for the company’s worldwide application innovation services, felt quite comfortable with this task. He and his IBM colleagues recommended the design of a system that would give the city managers a single view of each citizen and an integrated view of the city’s key service indicators.

In a city with a reputation for past mismanagement and lingering public corruption, the system also needs to make all of the city government’s activities more transparent and to be able to track performance of managers and departments.

The team called for the creation of a mayoral dashboard that will allow Landrieu to track the performance of the city on a near-real-time basis by viewing key indicators represented graphically on a computer screen–and even on his mobile phone.

For Holley, spending three weeks in New Orleans was an intense experience. The team worked seven days a week and lived together in a B&B in one of New Orleans’ neighborhoods. They met with a host of city leaders from government, academia and community organizations. “It was an invigorating experience. It was like a roller-coaster ride that we didn’t drop off until the last day,” he says.

Early on, when Holley toured the city and people told him about how the neighborhoods had once looked, he felt like he was peering back in time. Now he feels that he’s looking toward the city’s future.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Kerrie Holley, New Orleans

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The team’s core insight relates to an observation that author Malcolm Gladwell made in his 2000 bestseller, The Tipping Point. Gladwell cited a phenomenon he called the Broken Windows Theory: “If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a a signal that anything goes.”

In Syracuse, a crucial indicator was the frequency with with residents of economically distressed neighborhoods call police to report drug-related activities. If they don’t call, the neighborhood is likely on a slippery slope. But, “when somebody calls to complain, the police respond and make arrests. It means the neighbors care,” says Jing Shyr, a distinguished engineer at IBM who was on the Smarter Cities Challenge team.

Overall, Syracuse doesn’t have an especially bad housing vacancy rate–just 4.6%. But that’s misleading. When you drill down and look at individual neighborhoods you see that several of them have vacancy rates topping 10% and others, on the bubble, have rates between 5% and 10%.  Rates that high are strong signals that a neighborhood is in trouble and, left alone, could get a lot worse.

Shyr and her colleagues examined vast amounts of information about crime and police activity, real estate trends, poverty rates and other socioeconomic indicators for Syracuse’s 32 neighborhoods. They found some correlations between socioeconomic indicators and vacancy rates that surprised them. For example, in neighborhoods where the male unemployment rate was lower than the rate for women, vacancies typically weren’t that bad.  Digging deeper, the team found that lower-income men and women frequently compete for the same jobs. In neighborhoods where many woman have jobs, a lot of men are idle–which can lead to drug use and crime.

Before the IBM team performed its analysis, Syracuse leaders had strong impressions about what’s wrong with their most troubled neighborhoods, but they didn’t know for sure. Now, armed with more detailed information about causes and effects, they can craft responses with a higher likelihood of success.  Also, based on data trends, they can predict when a neighborhood is about to go down hill, and act proactively to stabilize the situation. “You’re using data to help the people in the community fix their community,” says Shyr. “You can help them reach a consensus. It’s no longer about who shouts louder. They have a mathematical model that helps them do more scientific decision making.”
Like the Clemans, Shyr now has a strong desire to help turn around Syracuse. She has no plans to move to one of its impoverished neighborhoods, as they did. But she’s willing to do statistical analysis work for  the city on a volunteer basis. She says: “I said, ‘Call me. I’ll help out.’”

Here’s a related blog post by Leslie Plant, one of the IBMers on the Challenge team in Syracuse.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Syracuse

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.”

——————————

The Start: 2:00 PM

Welcome – Jennifer J. Raab, President Hunter College:

She points out that the Roosevelt House is an apt place to hold a competitiveness event. 70 years ago the US was struggling with the Great Depression and IBM was struggling to stay in business. They came together to create Social Security—the biggest accounting application of all time. Ultimately, it became the foundation for economic security for American citizens. The idea for Social Security was hatched here when FDR met with Frances Perkins, later his secretary of labor, when he was president elect in early 1933.

She says there are no more important public private partnerships than those that support public education. At Hunter College, $5000 a year in tuition will buy you a world-class education. “We’re training the next generation of America’s workforce and applying those skills to society and business.” We can’t boost our economy without creating qualified employees for the workforce.

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2:45 PM

Keynote – Bridget van Kralingen, IBM General Manager, N. America:

Our theme today is the importance of public-private partnerships in helping to restore America’s global competitiveness.

It’s needed to be the catalyst for change and innovation.

There are some great examples of public-private partnerships that helped transform society. Social Security didn’t just build a safety net. It also gave people confidence in the ability and willingness of US businesses to play a constructive role in society.

The US space program, another public-private partnership spawned a number of industries.

We believe that PPPs can play the same important role today.

We have several challenges. Economic. BRIC growth has sustained and 115 countries in the world are growing faster than the US. Our competitive environment. We talk about creating jobs. “I’d argue that if you create skills, you create jobs. Skills create jobs.” The US now ranks 7^th among the OECD countries in spending on R&D—down from No. 1.

“We have a couple of dysfunctional behaviors. The recession has led to a lot of grinding and short term thinking, which works against innovation.”

“We have to create the future, not just focusing on fixing the symptoms today.”

There are great current examples of public private partnerships.

One example is a partnership of IBM and New York City. We’re creating a technical high school in Brooklyn, with two extra years of schooling. They’ll earn an associates degree. We’re in the process of announcing a similar program with the city of Chicago.

We’re also doing a partnership with New York State—investing with the state and other companies to create the next generations of chip technology.

“We put our money where our mouth is.”

We can use these partnership to drive growth and regain the US competitiveness that we need.

——

The Context:

Here’s van Kralingen’s post on the A Smarter Planet Blog.

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3 p.m. PM

Keynote – Robert Steel, Deputy Mayor, NYC

The good news is New York City is growing. Most US cities are not growing. We’ll add 1 million people in the coming decades.

We launched Plan NYC in 2007. Mayor Michael Bloomberg laid out wherewe want New York to be over the next decade. The goal is to create a sustainable city.

We have 3.7 million jobs. Health care, finance, retail and business services are the four largest categories.

Unemployment is still unacceptably high, though. We don’t want to live in a city with high unemployment. The headline number is 8.6% but it actually understates the problem. For men of color in the Bronx, the unemployment rate is probably 40%. That’s unacceptable.

Also, unemployment is longer term than in past recessions.

Jobs and innovation are the key themes for economic development.

There are four pillars of economic vitality in New York. 1) Improve the quality of life in the city. 2) Create a pro business environment. 3) Invest in the future. 4) Innovation and economic competitiveness are key.

A good example of a public-private partnership is the High Line, a former elevated rail line that has been converted to a park—which has stimulated a lot of economic development. The city invested $120 million. There’s $75 million of private money. A lot of buildings are being constructed and remodeled. Thirty buildings are done or on the drawing boards. “We look for situations where public money encourages private money.”

Concerning talent: After the financial crisis the economic development corp. in the city surveyed employers to find out the skills that would be needed for the future. The answer was science and technology. Our R&D per capita is too low. So our of this came the idea of trying to turn NYC into a new Silicon Valley. This is the Applied Sciences NYC program. We had seven submissions from a total of 17 academic institutions.

We give advice, real estate and up to $100 million in funding What do we get for it? The range of proposals goes up to a 2-million square foot campus and $2.5 billion in investment.

“This is a big idea. It’s about innovation, thinking ahead and planning. It’s about thinking ahead and changing the nature of the city’s economy.”

————–

The Context: Robert Steel talks about the Applied Sciences NYC initiative, a public-private partnership aimed at creating a larger pool of people with technical skills in New York City.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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3:30 PM

Panel – New Thinking on Public/Private Partnerships

Moderator: Stan Litow, IBM vice president for corporate social responsibility, asks about entrepreneurialism and education

Participants:

John Seely Brown – Author

No skills last that long. We have to create a disposition to learn. You have to connect to learn, and you have to learn continually. “The half life of skills today has gone down to about five years.”

In the past, people defined themselves only by what they created themselves. Today, the kids are saying: ‘I am what I create, what I share, and what other people build on.’

Kathryn Wylde –CEO,  Partnership for New York City

Ronald Reagan popularized the concepts of public private partnerships. He understood that it wasn’t about business taking over government responsibilities but investing around government priorities.

We’re working with the business community to create early state investment funds. It’s a stream of activity, not one offs. We have set up technology media labs. We have startup incubation labs. We work in partnership with the city’s economic development corporation.

Robert Steel – Deputy Mayor, Economic Development, NYC

We can’t develop a clear vision of that a new science and engineering university in the city should be. We need ideas from organizations that know how to do this.

Some of the institutions are making joint submissions, and some of them chose corporations to be part of their submissions. IBM is one.

“We had a dating service for these guys to come together.”

Expect an announcement in January.

Bridget van Kralingen – IBM, General Manager, North America

You have to keep changing your business models and operating models. We’ve gone through significant changes. We are going much broader with the ecosystem of companies we partner with, and many of them are small companies and innovative startups. We have an entrepreneurships program where we’re helping more than 1000 startups develop their offerings and their business capabilities. We’ve extended it to a program with cities worldwide, called The Smarter Cities Challenge. We do a little project with each of them. We identify innovations and improvements. We offer the skills to build, produce and deliver.

John Seely Brown

We have to reinvent the notion of the land grant college which helped build the US economy in the 20^th Center.

You need to have a dialogue between the universities and the ecosystem of innovation around them. It’s not one way—with all the ideas coming from the university and then being developed out in the economy.

In the Applied Science NYC project, where more than one dozen universities are making proposals for a new science and engineering university in New York, every participant will be a winner. They’re all transforming their thinking through this project.

Robert Steel

“None of us should go to sleep tonight not worrying about the plight of public education. We’re cheating our children and other people’s children.”

“Better public education solves about nine problems.”

———————-

4 p.m. Q&A with the panel:

John Seely Brown – Author, on the role of technology in improving national competitiveness.

“Knowledge is being created so there’s too much to know. We need machines like IBM’s Watson to help us figure things out.”

Kathryn Wylde –CEO,  Partnership for New York City

Robert Steel – Deputy Mayor, Economic Development, NYC, on access for people with disabilities.

“The honest answer is we’ll do a better job by having advocates keep us informed. When we have groups that have special needs, we’ll have to address it by find out what are the best practices.”

“We’re dealing with the issue of taxies. Do we retrofit every taxi or do we dispatch special taxis to help people with a disability. We’re debating the issue right now.”

New York competes not just with Chicago and LA. We have to compete with Boulder and Austin. People can live in a lot places. “Dealing with the quality of life can’t be underestimated.”

The Context:

Here’s a video of John Seely Brown talking about collaborative innovation and other innovation issues:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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4:15 p.m. Presentation – David McQueeney, IBM Research, talks about IBM’s Watson, the computer program that beat former grand champions at TV’s Jeopardy!

We’ve been building computing systems for 100 years, and now we’re asking computing systems to take on more and more challenging problems.

Computers can tackle thinking problems, which for a long time humans thought were reserved for out domain. Watson is one of those.

The Watson project in IBM Research shows that the kind of leaders you want in a research division are people who can pull together a large number of complex technical threads and build something that none of the individual researchers could have done by themselves.

“Watson changed the way people think about what computing might be useful for.”

————-

McQueeney talks about the government’s capabilities for taking advantage of vast amounts of data to improve services for citizens and enable collaboration.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Technorati Tags: IBM, national competitiveness, new york city

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 21^st 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 8^th. Please Tweet to #uscompetes.)

In this era of financial instability and governmental austerity, some argue that government can no longer afford to launch bold new programs aimed at making a big difference in the lives of citizens. Efforts like the US space program, Social Security and the Internet are no longer possible. The failure of Congresses’ Supercommittee to forge a budget compromise seems to confirm this conclusion.

We, at IBM, disagree. We believe it is still possible to launch bold, world-changing initiatives and investments in our future. They just need to be approached differently, with focus on bridging gaps in political viewpoints and strengthening our nation. Today, government must work collaboratively with businesses, universities and community organizations to tackle our most demanding challenges and improve our global economic competitiveness.

New York City is in the final stages of choosing among seven competing proposals for its Applied Sciences NYC initiative. The plan is to build a new world-class science and technology campus that will be an engine for economic development for the city, an opportunity to expand for universities and a source of talent for corporations. Universities, including Stanford, NYU, Cornell and Columbia, have teamed with each other and, in some cases, industrial partners, to put together proposals, and the city has pledged to provide free land and up to $100 million in capital spending.

But science and technology education does not start at the university level. We need to create a large talent pool of people with technical skills that businesses need to be competitive. That is why IBM formed a partnership earlier this year with the New York City Department of Education, the City University of New York and NYC College of Technology to create a new public school, called P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College High School), which combines high school and the first two years of college. The goal is to prepare students to fill entry-level jobs in technology fields and provide them with foundational knowledge that will allow some to pursue science and math degrees in a four-year college. IBM is providing software and helping to develop the curriculum and coordinate mentoring and internships to build the skills we need to stay globally competitive. P-TECH graduates will get first crack at jobs with IBM.

Innovation is vital for improving America’s competitiveness. But while scientific and technological innovation are necessary, they’re not sufficient. We need to develop creative new approaches to solving complex problems and to making our society more productive—and public-private partnerships are one important way to do that. At a time when some of the old tried-and-true solutions don’t seem to be working, it’s time to try something that does work.

Technorati Tags: Albany Nanotech, IBM, US competitiveness

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 20^th 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 8^th. Please Tweet to #uscompetes.

Technorati Tags: IBM, US competitiveness

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.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see how people and organizations and countries screw up. It’s much harder to be smart when you’re trying to figure out the present. Still, the lessons from IBM’s turnaround seem to be spot-on relevant to the potential turnaround of the United States.

I explored the lessons from IBM’s history in my role as co-author of the company’s centennial book, Making the World Work Better, which was published in June. In this short blog post, I can’t detail the long list factors that contributed to IBM’s turnaround. Indeed, some don’t require explanation. The merits of financial discipline and fact-based decision making are abundantly obvious—even though they’re too often honored in the breach rather than in observance. So I want to focus on two of them:

View globalization as an opportunity. Since the 1920s, IBM has been a pioneer in each phase of corporate globalization. Now it’s leading the transition to what we call the globally integrated enterprise. Under the multinational model, companies operate mini versions of themselves in every country where they operate, with all the related overhead. In contrast, IBM now performs work on behalf of clients at the places in the world were it can be done most effectively and efficiently. That includes research, product development, manufacturing, and a whole array of centrally coordinated services performed both for IBM itself and its clients.

IBM embarked on this journey in response to the threat of the fast-emerging Indian tech services outfits, which offered roughly comparable services to IBM and other Western tech services companies at much lower prices. IBM had to respond–or risk suffering another near-death experience. It began hiring aggressively in Indian and other low-cost labor markets. But IBM didn’t stop there. Its idea of being truly global is much more expansive than simply capturing the benefits of labor cost arbitrage. India, China, Brazil and other fast-developing economies are IBM’s new growth markets. And IBM understands that it needs to tap the best minds of those countries to succeed there.

The US has not been effective in defending itself against the backwash of globalization. Its immigration policies are self-defeating. When the US blocks highly skilled immigrants from coming and working here, for instance, it weakens the domestic talent pool, and, therefore, US companies. At the same time, compared to other countries, the federal government does little to retain vital industries here—or to foster the development of new ones. Like IBM half a decade ago, the United States needs to wake up to the realities of globalization and develop a strategy for becoming much more competitive. Otherwise, its days as the dominant global economic power are numbered.

Be willing to change everything except your core beliefs: In 1962, Thomas Watson Jr., then IBM’s chief executive, told a university audience that to be successful for many years, an organization has to establish a core set of beliefs upon which it bases its day-to-day actions. Further, he said, it has to adhere to those beliefs, and it has to be willing to change everything except those beliefs in response to a changing environment. That approach to business was the basis of Watson’s decision to risk everything and reinvent the company in the 1960s, with phenomenally successful results.

A decade ago, IBM revised its set of beliefs—similar to the old ones but fine-tuned to today’s realities. They are: “Dedication to every client’s success,” “Innovation that matters, for IBM and the world,” and “Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.” Perhaps the most important aspect of the new beliefs is that they were created through an online “jam” to which every employee was invited.

Those beliefs undergird the transformation journey that IBM has been on ever since.

IBM’s leaders believe that organizations must continuously transform themselves to survive and thrive for the long term. In fact, they have to anticipate changes that are coming and act decisively to get out ahead of them.

Over the past 15 years, IBM has transformed itself from a company whose fortunes were too closely tied to computer hardware to one focused on software, services and other higher-margin parts of the computer business. At the same time, it reshaped itself into a truly global company capable of serving its clients as they adapt to changes in the economy, markets, technology, competition and governmental policies. As expressed in the company’s Smarter Planet agenda, IBM’s mission is simple yet incredibly challenging: making the world work better.

Like IBM of the 1990s, many of the organizations and institutions that grew up in previous centuries are today in need of an overhaul. And, like IBM, the most forward-thinking of them have learned that it’s not enough to successfully complete an organization-saving turnaround. You have to keep the revolution revolving.

For more than two centuries, the United States was driven by a strong aspiration: to make progress, for individuals and society as a whole. Today, some fear change and seek to hold it at bay. They dream of the past, not of the future. Based on analysis of IBM’s experiences, that’s a deeply flawed strategy.

The country’s core values still work. As laid out in the Constitution, they are: “To form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” Yet the mission is not accomplished.

During our research for the centennial book, one of my co-authors, Jeffrey O’Brien, identified a simple but profound truth: change comes easily; it happens by itself; but progress is difficult; it must be won, and won again.

It’s not too late for the United States to rededicate itself to making progress.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Kleiner Perkins, Mary Meeker

Check out the Gartner blog, where this post was originally published.

Technorati Tags: Gartner, IBM, Rio de Janeiro

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.)

To provide an example of how this works: If heavy rains cause flooding in a specific portion of the city, the operations center coordinates teams that notify citizens ahead of time via text message, close down the streets, mobilize ambulances, and shut down electricity distribution systems in the neighborhood to prevent electrocution. These processes are all pre-determined via standard operating procedures (SOPs). On the city side, bringing all these agencies under one roof helps break the silos that perennially plague the smooth delivery of city services. And, on the citizen side, it certainly helps that Brazil’s mobile device and networks are exploding, providing the platform for vigorous smart city app development and citizen involvement.

But technology is only one part of the winning recipe for a smart city. One persistent barrier echoed many times at the event is that smart city projects often rely heavily on the vision and initiative of specific mayors and administrations, which typically face four-year election cycles. The timetables required for certain types of infrastructure – particularly those involving high-tech and high initial capital expenditures – don’t always fit neatly into mayoral terms. Indeed, Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, who spoke at the event, described the challenges of making progress on the project despite his uncertain future as mayor. Selecting smart city technology measures that optimize in terms of high net-present value, ease of deployment within a tight timeframe, and high PR benefits for the mayoral office seem to be emerging as the most pragmatic smart city solutions that address this challenge.

What differentiates Rio from other smart cities is the added challenge of managing its favelas – shantytowns perched on steep hillsides throughout the city that have historically received little in the way of city services or regulation – and integrating them with Rio’s urban fabric. These areas are among the most vulnerable to disasters such as mudslides as well as important symbolic testing grounds for Rio’s ability to serve even its poorest citizens as scrutiny of the city mounts in the lead-up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. From the perspective of a smart city, the favelas also provide opportunities for infrastructural “leapfrogging,” installing smart systems that could catapult these portions of the city to levels found in the rest of the city using state-of-the-art technology.

All in all, though, the event provided a clear picture of the concrete progress that’s being made on the smart city front and, in particular, the unique opportunities afforded by cities in emerging markets.

Technorati Tags: Eric Bloom, IBM, Pike Research, Smarter Cities Rio