From Nano-dots to Giga-blots

11 Jul

As a follow-up to our earlier note (28th June) on the questions that might be asked by the UK’s Public Accounts Committee when they consider the NAO report on broadband delivery, we’ve spotted another possible mind-mapping connection – the Federation for Small Business report on the value of local procurement.

In the minds of those who think that digital infrastructure is so complex that it can only be addressed by Mega Phone companies, the notion of locally designed and managed network initiatives might seem an unlikely concept.  Fortunately the economic experience elsewhere in Europe and the USA shows otherwise.

Our editorial, ‘ The great dot-joining debate‘, asks whether the FSB’s procurement report will be considered as an ignorable nano-dot or be a broadband Giga-blot when the PAC meets to take ‘expert’ evidence on 17th July.

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Curating for the Curious

6 Jul

flipbook screenimageIt may be a good reason for not responding to online surveys – the tick boxes never seem to match our interests – but the enigma that is Groupe Intellex can frustrate those with tidier minds.  Even our logo seeks to escape from those who would prefer to place people on tidy library shelves or in neatly filed boxes.

But if perchance you are curious and can be bothered to peer inside the portfolio of those travelling in an innovative world, then take a look at our magazine as it trawls the Groupe Intellex mind.

Here you will find most of our recent outputs, some guest contributions, odd things that need a wider audience, some twitterish comments, links to interesting innovations and serious stuff with, hopefully, a few chuckles tucked inside.   It’s not of course all our own work but Flipboard makes curating so easy that it deserves a mention in any journal dedicated to innovation.

Writing is such fun – and not just for our own amusement.  Even the most earnest of visionary endeavours, Business Plans or Strategy Statements for stakeholders can afford to be lightened and humanised with some sense of poetry.

Should I mention that if the topic appeals our rates can be very reasonable?  Thinking Allowed.

Sustainable Development and socio-efficiency

5 Jul

GI LogoIn his introduction to the July issue of Quality Times the editor draws attention to the definition of eco-efficiency by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development – “eco- efficiency is achieved by the delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impact and resource intensity throughout the life-death cycle, to a level at least in line with the earth’s carrying capacity.”

The editor, Pradeep Chaturvedi,  adds that ‘similar to the concept of eco- efficiency but so far less explored in corporate sustainability is the concept of socio-efficiency, i.e., the relation between a company’s value added and its social impact.  While it can be assumed that corporate impact on environment is usually negative, this may not be true for the social impact. . . .  Both eco-efficiency and socio-efficiency promote economic sustainability of businesses in the long run’.

This neatly introduces a paper by Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas that addresses Environmental Management Challenges and Opportunities for the World Congress in Dehli on 19th/20th of July.  In the context of a world-wide digitalisation of economies, empowerment of citizens, and the disappointments of Rio+20 last year this paper aimed at corporate boardrooms could not be better timed.

The Groupe Intellex summary of Colin’s paper is available here.

 

 

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‘Global Urbanist’: the story behind this year’s Intelligent Community winner

3 Jul

Further to our ‘Shaken and Stirred‘ report (8th June – from the Intelligent Community Forum  summit in New York) the Global Urbanist has published the inside story of the winning community – Taichung.

The editorial by Robert Bell and Sylvia Albert can be found here.

Seeing the Value – will the UK Public Accounts Committee make the connections?

28 Jun

WestminsterIn matters of broadband policy many folks would not normally rate the chances of UK Parliamentarians having sufficient awareness to probe government policy to any great depth but in July their Public Accounts Committee will have the benefit of the National Audit Office report on the delivery performance of the Department of Culture Media and Sport – the current policy owner for the UK’s most critical infrastructure development.

The committee can, of course, give witnesses a fully televised hard time for the benefit of the wider public but much will depend on the members’ ability to ask incisive questions.   In their deliberations over the state of broadband policy the PAC will also have the benefit of the Information Economy industry strategy recently launched by the Department for Business (the former owner of broadband infrastructure policy) and, of course, the brilliant independent review of Public Sector Information by Stephan Shakespeare

Hearings of the Public Accounts Committee of the UK Parliament seem an unlikely platform for articulation of radical policy ideas.  The PAC may be regarded as ‘influential’ but in practice government can ignore its reports and the committee has no direct vote on policy issues.  At its best they can capture and deliver views that are of common concern – views and sensitivities that any government might be foolish to dismiss –  and this is why the combination of the NAO, IE and PSI reports is now so powerful.

Centre-right policy across the entire economy is firmly grounded in a view of competitive market efficiency that is so often a misinterpretation of its roots in the USA.    It is true that radical approaches to infrastructure provision in the USA have been routinely opposed in the courts with intensive lobbying from established industry interests.  That however has not prevented 135 municipal FTTP access networks from being deployed and is not deterring many others now in the throes of feasibility studies.  Indeed their regulator, the FCC, is actively encouraging the growth of new entrants to deliver local ‘future-proofed’ Gigabit networks – often in conjunction with local municipal Energy companies.

The reason for this municipal non-conformist economic behaviour is quite simple.  These cities and communities need jobs and economic growth – and someone has rumbled that the global market for the expertise that is engendered is not just huge; it is vastly greater than the growth prospects of an industry dedicated to limiting its own long-term growth in the interests of short-term market gains and value extraction from an outdated analogue infrastructure.

On the other side of the Atlantic the policy view of connectivity is analogous to their recently reframed position on Climate Change.  After years of resistance, after listening attentively to oil and gas lobbyists, realisation has finally dawned that the global market for sustainable energy is real, that climate change is real, and there’s an urgent need to gain qualifying experience if the opportunities are not to be missed.

Which is exactly the point made in the UK’s Information Economy industry strategy.  ‘UK Trade & Industry’ now understands that the global market for smart city management systems is worth around £400bn by 2020 and, if UK firms are to stand any chance of gaining a modest 10% market share, there’s an urgent need to have some sort of credible  qualifying experience.  So far only one UK city has made any real attempt to deploy an ultra-fast city network and, in a classically defensive and litigious response, BT and Virgin Media have opposed that initiative

The PAC may perhaps wonder why the Connected Cities programme is so lacking aspiration and urgency that the public funding is almost entirely ending up with established interests who are not keen to see citizens and enterprise provided with future-proofed fibre access networks.  They might argue the point from the view of Health, Energy, Transport, Environment, Education, Social Services or any departmental position that is now critically dependent on a fully connected digital economy.

They might even question the oddly antique view that the Information Economy is some small but growing sub-sector of UK industry – some clever clogs that do strange digital things – rather than the primary focus for revitalisation and rebalancing across the entire economy.

And, while they are rightly focused on public expenditure they might wonder about value for money for expensive public sector networks paid for by the public purse but not, it seems, allowed to be used for the benefit of citizens.

The digital penny may perhaps have dropped in a corner of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills but it is surely the Treasury that needs to understand the risks and true cost to an economy that cannot afford to prop up relics of the past.

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Related Links.

‘Searching for the Centre of the Digital Universe‘

‘Economic Revitalisation‘

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The power of Open Data

10 Jun

In this brief summary of our NextGen presentation at last week’s ICF Summit in New York, Marit Hendriks and I gave a few examples of innovations engendered by Open Data from both the community perspective and that of Enterprise.

The summary ‘Innovating in Public: the power of Open Data‘  includes material from the Ordnance Survey’s Geovation Challenge, the Open Data Institute and Simon Rodgers iPad book ‘Facts are Sacred’.

 

 

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Shaken and Stirred in the digital economy

10 Jun

At the ICF Global Summit in New York this past week – listening to the stories from the world’s top 7 ‘Intelligent Communities’, your correspondent found that enthusiasms were not entirely dampened by New York’s inclement weather.

The full story ‘Shaken and Stirred’ describes a common factor in each of the case studies from these pioneering communities – they first started on their journeys by understanding where they were coming from and the perils of standing still.

 

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Innovation and job creation: Intelligent Community Forum annual Global Summit

6 Jun

(David Brunnen and Marit Hendriks reporting from New York)

The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) is holding its annual Summit this week in New York City. This 3-day event is an international gathering of mayors, chief administrative officers, CIOs and economic development officers from cities, states and regions around the world that are designated Intelligent Communities by the ICF. The theme this year is “Innovation and Jobs”.

In partnership with the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, the event brings the world’s most dynamic communities together to discuss how to use information and communications technology innovation to create jobs and sustainable communities.

The high point of the event will be on Friday when ICF announces the name of the world’s 2013 Intelligent Community of the Year.

Amongst the speakers gathered from around the world will be Mike Lazaridis, founder of Blackberry, Uzo Udemba, developer of Lagos as an intelligent city and Mayor Michael Coleman of Columbus Ohio.

From the UK, Marit and I will today be addressing a conference plenary on the impacts of Open Data innovation and giving several examples of community development as well as the trends towards greater transparency in the commercial sector and environmental sustainability.

Developing this theme has been excellent preparation for the upcoming Intelligent Cities event in Leeds on June 19th.

Working with the ICF has hugely informed NextGen Events – particularly in helping to identify the key UK challenges faced by cities and communities as the investment priorities for digital infrastructure begin to be realised.   A brief summary of the 2013 themes can be found in our paper ‘Economic Revitalisation’.

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Futurist Rohit Talwar takes centre stage at UK Intelligent Cities Conference

3 Jun

Rohit Talwar wbsizeGlobal futurist and CEO of Fast Future Research, Rohit Talwar, will explore the social, educational, economic and environmental potential of the intelligent city at the Intelligent Cities Conference in Leeds on 19 June. This will include a deep dive into how tomorrow’s city should be viewed as the enabler of the future, and the ‘soft elements’ of creating an intelligent city to take full advantage of upgrading its physical technological infrastructure.

Talwar will address how the development of intelligent cities is a critical move in creating a sustainable future. Which will engage and develop local economies, create community cohesion and build lifelong education platforms that equip children and adults alike for a lifespan that could last 90 years of more.

“An intelligent city is much more than just its technology,” states Talwar, who has been named as one of the top ten global future thinkers by The Independent. “It’s about the mindset shift that delivers the thinking, planning and rapid execution of ideas on how to build a sustainable society that makes maximum use of the facilities already around us. For example, repurposing unused stores on the high street as community resources and using public buildings, such as schools as multi-service facilities in the evenings to accommodate local libraries, community centres, doctors’ surgeries and even magistrates’ courts. Such moves would meet the twin goals of cutting the operating costs for local councils and taking local facilities and giving them more value to the community.”

Rohit will use real life case study examples about how the trends and forces that are driving and enabling this multi-faceted view of social, educational and community cohesion in a city that can be facilitated with the technology and infrastructure already available. Rotterdam’s investment in its planning for sustainability, Helsinki’s investment in energy and resources, and the IBM central city control centre in Rio de Janeiro which integrates the work of multiple agencies, are all examples of how cities around the world are taking a smart approach.

“Technology is a critical enabler of the smart city, but a truly sustainable and intelligent model requires us to go much broader and think about every aspect of what makes a city vibrant and viable. The Government is working hard to make the technology infrastructure a priority but it needs to see this as part of the vision not the whole solution to what we need for the future of our cities,” he added.

Rohit Talwar’s presentation will take place at 12.35pm at The Rose Bowl, Leeds Metropolitan University on 19 June. The Intelligent Cities conference will also include presentations from Cambium Networks, Ericsson, EE, IBM, Cisco Arup, aql, Leeds Data Thing, Medtech University of Leeds and Synchronoss Technologies. Paul Hadley who is the Deputy Director Information Economy Industrial Strategy at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will also speak.

The Intelligent Cities Conference is a business event and costs £50 plus VAT to attend. To register for the event please visit: http://www.regonline.co.uk/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1209906.

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25 years of not going to work

28 May

A few years before I left corporate employment I stopped going to work.   These things were not unrelated.

Those last few years were the most productive and rewarding times in that entire 31-year corporate career.  In those few years I learned more, achieved more, read and wrote more and had a great influence on the organisation.  But, by not going to work, by working predominantly from home, I also learned to appreciate the diversity of the world outside of the confines of that corporate culture.

Now, 25 years on, working from home is the default option for a great many people.   It was rare, back in the late 80’s, to have the connectivity and the kit to make remote working practicable.  It was, in fact, my early skirmishes with email and the emergent Internet that contributed to the disabling distance that grew between myself and the corporation – a growing gulf between reality and their entrenched policy view that the ‘Internet was a playground for pirates’.

Twenty-five years on, that dispiriting view still prevails in some corporate corners.  There is a residual notion of an unsupervised playground with exposure to all manner of distracting and corporately non-compliant influences – exposing some uncertain threat to the corporate belief system and demanding a level of trust in human resourcefulness that seems to be beyond the management systems and processes of the HR department.

For those of us who have been liberated from ties and corporate cuff-links the common-sense logic of ‘home working’ and telecommuting is blindingly obvious.  It’s a productivity bargain for both employer and employee and delivers environmental and societal gains.  But this is perhaps not so obvious to the new graduate setting out on the road to employment – despite the patently obvious fact that college education will have taught them much about studying in sleeping quarters (1).

One hugely important lesson from my own early days was that home-working is often a misnomer – there is a need for just a little physical separation.  The off-stage barking dog, the sharp-clawed cat, the kids raiding the fridge can be a distraction during business Skype calls.  It was a mistake to remove the spare bedroom door to make room for a filing cabinet for it meant that the ‘office’ was never closed.   Nowadays I spend my editorial days in a log cabin at the far end of the garden.  Galley duty is a great reason for going home.

Systems designers working for modern businesses have now adopted a far more agile view of corporate needs.  Many employees may be on the road or of no fixed (office) abode.  The system flexibilities they need to coordinate project work lend themselves perfectly to telecommuting even in the most privacy-conscious organization.  Virtual Private Networks, neat integration of VoiceIP, inbuilt messaging systems, open diaries and a degree of discipline now mean that groups of people can work better comfortably apart than when corralled in some expensive and inconveniently-located office space.

But the new graduate will not know this.  He or she will not know what to expect or what to demand. They will not know how much they will be trusted to get on with stuff unsupervised.  After years of studying, the prospect of going to work (and getting paid for it) is something to strive for.  So many of these young people will only gradually layer onto their deep-seated expectations a degree of flexibility that matches their maturity.

In these days of economic recession where job-seeking is a major challenge it may seem strange to be too picky but were I starting over again I would consider prospective employment only in those places where the opportunities to make great changes were matched by an open willingness to adopt flexible work-styles.

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1. For a comprehensive review of telecommuting from a graduate viewpoint see ‘Missing the Water Cooler: A Recent Grad’s Guide to Navigating Telecommuting’ by Mitchell Fielder

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