Posts Tagged ‘City’

29th November – 2nd December 2011, Barcelona, Spain

by Francesca Bria

The first Smart City Expo hosted more than 50 cities around the world, 118 businesses, over 6000 participants and 2000 panellists. The Expo announced the creation of a global Network of Smart Cities coordinated by the City of Barcelona, encompassing cities and businesses around the world. The objective is to promote policy actions and activities in this new field, by creating global common standards and criteria for the effective implementation of smart cities at a global level. The Expo was a meeting point for professionals active in the field of digital future cities, including heads of public administrations, practitioners and academics. Barcelona has made extensive investments and policy commitments with the intention of becoming one of Europe’s leading smart cities, promoting big innovation policy initiatives such as launching Barcelona Smart City Campus next to the 22@ district, an urban hub for businesses, innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity. The conference organisers invited speakers of the highest rank such as Carlo Ratti, Director of the MIT SENSEable City Lab, Anthony Townsend Research Director of the Institute for the Future, Jeremy Rifkin founder of the Foundation on Economic Trends, Abha Joshi-Ghani Manager of Urban Development of the World Bank, Neil Gershenfeld, Director of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, Adam Greenfield, founder and managing director of Urbanscale.

Developing the smart and sustainable cities of the future is not an easy undertaking at a time of urgent societal challenges such as financial crises, environmental disasters, climate change, ageing populations and increasing unemployment. All these issues will require innovative solutions that challenge traditional ways of doing things. Organisations are required to move from closed innovation models to open and collaborative innovation models that can unleash the power of social production and collective intelligence.

It’s not just about the technology

One of the most challenging issues addressed during the different panels at the Expo was  that smart cities are clearly not only about ‘plumbing’ or a ‘technological fix’. On the contrary smart cities need to solve societal challenges through future technologies following a holistic approach that integrates technological innovation with urban planning, sociology and anthropology. For instance ‘defining innovative social meaning of technologies and investigating how urban technologies will impact public services and people’s lives’ are, according to Jonathan Wareham Vice-Dean of Research at Esade Business School, amongst the most exciting research questions. Integrating non technological elements, such as social relationships, institutions and social norms is going to be challenging, but that’s where the big impact will lie, leading to the discovery of new services that will transform people’s lives.

Innovation in smart cities

These issues focussed on civic innovation were further discussed during a panel moderated by Esteve Alimirall titled ‘Open innovation for developing smart cities’. I was one of the panellists together with Jake Barton and Peter Corbett, both members of Code for America, one of the most interesting projects worldwide on open innovation in the public sector. In the panel I emphasised the importance of creating collective action and awareness, moving beyond the things that IT is already good at doing (such as data aggregation, sensing, tracking) to more complex aspects of social and collective intelligence. As Jeremy Rifkin reminded us in one stimulating debate during the Expo, what is happening with the smart cities is a new revolution in which new distributed energy models will shift towards a system similar to an ‘internet of global energy’, with a multitude of nodes with the capability to produce and distribute energy. This revolution according to Rifkin will provide an opportunity to create thousands of businesses and millions of jobs. From a more critical perspective Adam Greenfield, the author of Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing stressed the need for open civic innovation to emerge. According to Greenfield, there is no such a thing as a smart city, the city should empower people that can become smarter and collectively shape and transform the urban environment.

Cities in the driving seat

The public sector, and specifically cities, have an important role to play as the orchestrators of urban innovation platforms. Urbanization is occurring at a rapid rate; in 2050 75% of the population will live in cities. Cities can then set the rules of the game, building smart cities as open cities that facilitate innovation ecosystems to emerge, creating new entrepreneurial opportunities and jobs for future generations. This is why the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development is supporting 13 pilots in European cities that are developing smart applications in areas ranging from transport, education, health and environment.

Smart City Expo & World Congress will host again the second edition next November 2012.

Our Future Digital Economy: If You Build It, Will They Come?

18:30-19:30, 24^th October 2011, Imperial College Business School

Blog by Sherry Morris and Andrew Fletcher

The second of four Tech City Talks, hosted by Imperial College Business School and the Guardian’s Tech Weekly team focused on whether Government intervention in Tech City / Silicon Roundabout have been beneficial, and how it fits with other clusters and interventions.

Asked if Tech City was simply a brand to attract investment or whether the Government wants to invest in companies on the ground, Eric Pickles, secretary of state for communities and local government, made it clear direct government investment in companies would be the ‘kiss of death.’ He wants to see Tech City as a means for cities to join up globally.

He summarised one approach being used to support the development of clusters: enterprise zones. By using key interventions such as tax incentives, access to superfast broadband and local development orders, start up companies can get the push they need to develop and grow. The development orders being key to prevent the zones simply being used by companies to transfer existing jobs around the country. When asked to define what Tech City is, he pointed to three of four thriving sites around London where ‘techies’ and start-up companies can gather and feed off each other to develop new products, ideas and services.

Alex Deschamps-Sonsino, founder and CEO of Designswarm and co-founder of Tinker London and part of the Really Interesting Group, picked out other factors that led to the rise of Tech City, with the single biggest factor aiding growth being the expansion of the East London line. She also stressed the importance of small companies co-existing with large companies and providing support to help them develop. But the support needed in a company of 1-10 employees is radically different from that needed for 100 employees, even though both are classed as SMEs. She wants specific, targeted support for these ‘micro-companies’, so they, too, can get off the ground and grow, rather than be left to struggle along on their own.

Eric Van Der Kleij, CEO of Tech City Investment Organisation, argued that Silicon Roundabout is thriving since the spotlight was thrown on it by government a year ago, citing growth from 200 to 500 start-ups. Activities such as Silicon Milk Roundabout also clearly demonstrate the paid opportunities that these start-ups are generating for graduates. However, Alex pointed to the difficulties in measurement because of the difficulty in distinguishing what is a tech business, what is a creative business or what is something else.

Regardless of the numbers in the clusters, Tara Solesbury, a digital media and creative industries consultant, drawing on experiences from Wired Sussex, pointed out the importance of the clusters occurring naturally and within the local community. In her experience, only clusters that formed organically thrived, the rest died out.  She welcomed the development of more ‘tech cities’ around the country.

It was suggested that perhaps with all these numerous start-ups clusters we are in the midst of a new bubble. But Elizabeth Varley, CEO of Tech Hub, argued ‘no.’ The resurgence of tech and entrepreneurship in London is not a bubble, causing ill-considered investment in businesses, but a genuine increase in the considered investment in companies. Austere times are causing this resurgence of entrepreneurial activity, and a change of mentality to ‘if you don’t have a job, make yourself one.’

Asked if there was a need to focus on cities, rather than ‘Tech Rural’ Alex argued that being located remotely is possible, but inevitably travel will be required as the business grows and engages with larger communities. For a small percentage of businesses, clients remain local, but the majority need to set off and expand.

A recurring theme from Eric Pickles was the need for government to avoid meddling wherever possible and helping to create the right environments, through mechanisms such as enterprise zones, rather than using regulation. His hope is that these thriving clusters link up and work together not just within the UK, but worldwide, emphasising the part that cloud computing can play in helping individual clusters to collectively grow into something much bigger, outweighing the importance of the ‘vibe’ in any one particular area. In Tech City we are embodying the ‘build it and they will come attitude’

The series of talks continue next Monday at Imperial College Business School. For more information and to register:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/oct/03/tech-weekly-tech-city-talks-digital-economy-event

You can listen to the podcast of this week’s event here.

Our Future Digital Economy: Who Will Build It?

18:30-19:30, 10^th October 2011, Imperial College Business School

Blog by Andrew Fletcher

Launching a series of talks on different aspects of Tech City, the Guardian’s Tech Weekly team brought together a panel at Imperial College Business School to discuss the big issues.

Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts, kicked things off by highlighting the need to inspire people into Computer Science. This was a theme which was re-visited throughout the evening; How can we create the ‘Brian Cox effect’ in the digital economy? Turing was picked out as an inspiration, and with his centenary year coming up there is perhaps an opportunity there to inspire and bring on the future digital economy generation.

The message from Jeff Magee, Principal of Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College was clear: Industry help to shape our courses and they consistently tell us that they want computer scientists who are adaptable, numerate problem solvers, not people who are specialised in one particular technology. This message is echoed by start-ups businesses as well as large IT firms.

Start-ups are still having to go to Silicon Valley to hire good people, said Dan Crow from Songkick. This moved the discussion towards skills beyond coding, raising questions such as where does the entrepreneurial flair come from? David Willetts acknowledged that we need to be better in the UK, but said that we needed to work at changing the environment rather being in awe of the perception that America is just better at taking risks. The reason why Silicon Valley has become a successful cluster is because it fits his favourite definition; a low risk environment to conduct high risk activities.

Jeff Magee admitted that universities need to be better at supporting students in their entrepreneurial ventures but cautioned that this needs to be made available at the right time. Third year computing students come back from their six month placement in industry inspired by the real-world problems that they have been working on and full of ideas of things to do. That is the point to give them support in learning entrepreneurial skills and access to incubation facilities. The challenge is getting this support to the right people at the right time. At Imperial the Business School is ranked highly for innovation and entrepreneurship in its programmes and there are routes to make this available to students across the whole campus. The challenge is replicating this more widely. David Willetts championed the ambition of every university having its own entrepreneurship society, and this approach was supported across the panel.

Emma Mulqueeny inspired both the panel and the audience with her activities through Young Rewired State, identifying and supporting people to learn how to program and then come together to learn from each other. The question raised was when to start. Emma felt that nine year olds were definitely capable, particularly to help engage girls at a younger age and sustain their interest afterwards so as not to ‘lose’ them. This was echoed by the panel. The challenge, said Jeff Magee, is to keep them inspired by giving them interesting problems so that coding doesn’t just become ‘boring.’

Cross-disciplinary approaches were discussed, both in teaching and in research. Dan wanted to see more blending together of MBAs, computer scientists and designers. Imperial College was cited as an example of success in this area, collaborating on courses with the Royal College of Art and incubating businesses successfully that blend skills and disciplines. In the research space, David Willetts highlighted the importance of cross-disciplinary research, supported through grand challenges from the research councils.

Surely there is no better way to develop the skilled work force of the future than by working across the disciplines of the past on the problems of the future, such as the approach being taken by the Digital City Exchange. The real challenge, of course, is making sure that the pipeline of skilled people is strong enough to meet the need of these cross-disciplinary challenges.

The series of talks continue next Monday at Imperial College Business School. For more information and to register:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/oct/03/tech-weekly-tech-city-talks-digital-economy-event