Hutchison Management

“Rethinking the Future” was the main theme in five different future focused events and discussions I enjoyed at the RSI | Rethink 2018 Leadership Summit on March 28, 2018 in Toronto.

I spoke at and chaired a panel at the excellent Rethink conference, organized by Yasmin Glanville, while participating in four other meetings and discussions during the week. Two meetings were focused on planning future lives for our citizens – one in a new 7,500 home local community – and the other was facilitating a meeting of the City of Vaughan’s Smart City Advisory Task Force to plan some award winning Smart City priorities.

Two other business meetings were concerned with the race to capture customers through their mobile phones as they approach “bricks and mortar stores”. Will suppliers of products or services reach these potential retail customers through the shopping mall’s software, or through the stores’ systems, or directly through the product suppliers’ own software? To be the winners in all cases, we need to “Change the Way We Change” says my colleague Neal Oswald.

The “Rethink” Conference was definitely focused on rethinking: sustainability, smart cities/future cities, architecture, transportation precision agriculture, finance, life and the impact of artificial intelligence.

Back in August, CATAAlliance (www.cata.ca), Canada’s One Voice for Innovation Lobby Group, called on Canada’s federal government to create a national Smart Communities Development Fund “SCDF” of $300 million to support the digital transformation of our cities and smaller communities and create a new $20 billion export trade business with an enhanced Smart City industrial sector as an integral part of building Canada as a global centre for innovation.

CATAAlliance keeps us updated on this initiative here. As well, I had the pleasure of weighing in on why the initiative matters here:

Canada’s New Smart Cities Challenge: Bill Hutchison, i-Canada Chair from CATAAlliance on Vimeo.

As I commented, “Digital transformation of life in our cities is creating enormous opportunities. The opportunities are to experience the economic, social and environmental benefits from becoming leaders in digital transformation. Substantial new trade opportunities are also available. The global market is growing rapidly to nearly one trillion dollars per year and growth is accelerating as countries like India move forward with their plan to create 100 new Smart Cities. Canada has established an impressive foundation in the field but global growth is accelerating and national governments are jumping in to support their cities and to create effective international sales and export capabilities. Becoming an established innovation nation requires effective national participation in the rapidly evolving Smart City movement.”

The world’s leading Smart, Intelligent, Sustainable and Resilient Cities or “Future Cities, are enjoying exceptional economic, social and environmental benefits. New incoming investment, the retention and attraction of young people, new knowledge jobs and improved citizen collaboration are just a few of the many benefits.

Urban digital transformation is a trillion-dollar global business today and about fifty cities in the world have made it to the top tier of Future City rankings. They are “Today’s Winners”. Others are moving up the scale – “Tomorrow’s Winners” – while hundreds of others have not started or are spending time and money with processes that are not working (“The Others”).

One reason why The Others are behind is they are lacking a strategic plan/roadmap that includes the priorities of citizens and community stakeholders, a plan/roadmap aligns those priorities with a digital strategy. The Others often start with a digital strategy by itself and begin designing and implementing it only to be rebuffed by City Council who have not participated in high level priority setting with citizen and stakeholder groups. Councillors have not been a part of the visioning process.

Meanwhile, The Winners are implementing Strategic Technology Alignment or “STA”, a phrase and process created 25 years ago when academic research at MIT identified the benefits of aligning IT investments with strategic goals of the organization. Business organizations have included STA in their plans for many years but it is a challenge in municipal government, in part because of the added management complexity in cities compared to business organizations.

Cities have more outside influences and influencers to be managed. The overall management challenge is very different because stakeholders and important citizens’ groups are not city government employees, but they are an important part of the “organization” writ large. Collaboration and consensus is important in Future City transformation. It requires strong leadership, and real success is achieved only when members of the entire community believe they have an effective voice in the Future City transformation process.

A Future City plan featuring Strategic Technology Alignment blends the benefits of being Smart, Intelligent, Sustainable, Resilient, and incorporates other themes such as Creative and Comfortable. Citizen and community stakeholder priorities inform the digital strategy which then connects many disparate applications and themes. The result is an effective and efficient transformation process that is creating Tomorrow’s Winners.

Establishing a Future City plan with STA, including citizen priorities, can be achieved in three months – in Canada at least because of the availability of necessary citizen research coordinates for outreach feedback. The process requires strong senior civic leadership and oversight by a Smart City Advisory Board or Task Force representing all dimensions of the community. The result will be citizen satisfaction and support with better civic productivity and important future positioning on the national and global scene.

To schedule a seminar on Fast Start Citizen Outreach with Strategic Technology Alignment contact us here or on LinkedIn at ca.linkedin.com/in/hutchisonbill.

This summer, Adam Belsher, CEO of Magnet Forensics wrote a piece for the Globe and Mail that I’ve been pondering. Take a look:

It’s time to build Canada’s 21st-century infrastructure
by Adam Belsher
The Globe and Mail, July 28, 2016

Canada’s economy is facing serious headwinds. Our trade deficit continues to grow. Our economic growth has been stunted as the world moves toward a post-commodities-driven economy, toward wealth creation where intangible goods drive the greatest profit. This new reality is putting our social infrastructure, health care, education and other public goods at grave risk.

Our federal government has recognized these challenges and committed to stimulating our economy through infrastructure investments. This could pay great dividends – or leave our next generations with a heavy bill to pay. The result depends on our leaders’ ability to make calculated investments in what’s needed for the future.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Excellent article! Talking about strategic investments and future markets, the UK and the US are great examples of identifying the benefits of stimulating the “Smart City” market, already estimated globally at $1 trillion per year. I’m using “Smart” to include all elements of urban digital transformation to what today we are calling a combination of Smart/Intelligent/Sustainable/Resilient etc. – in other words, our Future Communities.

The UK is pursuing two goals: Create a nation of the world’s leading Future Communities and also capture 10% of the global market for their own export business. To achieve their goal … and they are already succeeding with excellent results, they created the Smart Cities fund of approximately $500 million and invited cities to submit proposals for demonstrator projects involving 1,000 to 10,000 users. They are also creating “Catapults”, which are a series of Smart City innovation centres with a combination of incubation, demo developments, etc.

The US through US Ignite is funding cities in a targeted way too: $40 million for the best autonomous vehicle support program which Columbus won, and clustered gigabit cities are just two examples.

The point of all this is governments are being strategic and supporting market development where the funds will then flow through to the technology companies and others to solve and implement the new systems. Those companies are then going out and competing in the global Smart City market with support from great customers back home as references. This is different from ignoring market development with its flow-through of funds to suppliers and trying to “push” by focusing the funding on suppliers and letting them figure out the markets.

There is a real advantage to government policy that supports our cities. Our cities account for +80% of our people, our GDP and our innovation. The UK and the US have it figured out and so have China, India and the small guys like Estonia, Hong Kong, (30 gigabit per second community network development … 1,000 times faster than in Canada) and Singapore too.

We have great Islands of Excellence upon which to build. Four years ago “the other guys” started funding their cities for these 21st century opportunities. We need national determination to turn innovation words into action and cities is where the action can be magnified many times.