When my son was four he was a Lego fanatic. Architect, general contractor and construction crew all at once, he would get a vision for what he wanted to create and tackle it. We never knew exactly what he was going to build, but with a grin and a sparkle in his eye, he would combine about ten colorful blocks of different sizes. From one core set of building blocks would spring a rainbow of shapes and colors that miraculously worked together. They were transformed into an airport, an airplane – even a robot!
Smart Cities are Complex
I wonder if we need to think about creating a Smart City the same way. Smart Cities are complex. Many cities are developing plans to make their communities “smart,” but finding that the task represents so many moving parts that it can be daunting. There are not only diverse interests and requirements and regulation; there are diverse technologies and standards across many domains. The heavy lifting of listening to all those diverse stakeholders, defining a plan that everyone can agree with, and then actually putting all those moving parts together so the solutions actually work together – all in the context of constant political overtones – can be a Herculean task.
Creating a sustainable, livable city that leverages the latest in the Internet of Things and analytics so that the city just “gets” its citizens is a compelling call to action. The United Nations defined “Sustainable Cities and Communities” as one of their seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals. Smart cities have the potential for being good for the earth and good for people. There has been progress in communities across the globe deploying a variety of smart solutions. The technology has matured and applications that ten years ago sounded like science fiction are now becoming more doable. Smart lighting, smart parking, smart fleet management — even smart trash cans!
Yet, it is becoming apparent that cities who start by deploying standalone smart solutions often learn that as they try to add new ones, they run into complexity and often conflicting needs for power, data sets, wireless coverage. Some early adopter communities have even had to rip out early deployments as they tried to add solutions. The technology community has been challenged as well. Sure, there has been great enthusiasm for the Smart Cities market opportunity, and companies are making huge investments in R&D. But many are frustrated that they are not getting the ROI as fast as they had hoped for yet, as smart city applications are taking much longer to deploy and scale across cities than originally expected.
Programs like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Global Cities Team Challenge and the US-Ignite Smart Gigabit Communities Program have been great at encouraging communities to get a coordinated plan. US Ignite is actively trying to help cities learn from each other, establishing the US-Ignite Forum Program to help cities get started, starting with lighting and 5G/IoT/Small Cell deployments. TIA with IEC’s Systems Committee – Smart Cities is defining a global systems approach for smart cities that crosses technology domains, starting with terminology to get everyone on the same page. It is all very noble work, but it is still heavy lifting.
What if we used Building Blocks ?
What if we worked to build a Smart City the same way my son did with his Lego blocks? He started with a core set of components that worked together – and then built around it to create a bigger solution. What he created was unique every time, but the core building blocks snapped together first, and provided a foundation for the rest of his creativity.
I believe that a Smart Campus can serve that same purpose. A Smart Campus is essentially a “micro” version of a Smart City. It has all the same requirements of a Smart City to plan for: infrastructure, energy, water, waste, mobility, housing, community engagement, re-skilling, technology, citizenship, food supply chain, sustainability, environmental change, policy, data privacy, and security.
But a Smart Campus is smaller, and more manageable. Focusing on a Smart Campus can help dial down the complexity, scale and politics of a Smart City just a bit, and provide the opportunity for a diverse community to plan together using a systems approach. Whether for an academic or corporate or civic community, a Smart Campus can be an opportunity to tackle the complexity on a smaller scale, allowing the Smart Community around it to build upon the Smart Campus learnings and infrastructure. And while every Smart Campus is different, the foundation could be leveraged by others.
Smart Campus Open Innovation
The challenge is rarely the technology; it’s more about the people. And while bringing diverse people together to solve problems is not new, creating a way to do it successfully that consistently leads to tangible outcomes definitely is. I recently had the opportunity to work with The New Bureau, a social impact incubator and technology studio focused on tackling the UN Sustainable Development Goals. One of their offerings is called a “Solve Session”, a proven approach that accelerates understanding and decision-making across diverse perspectives, and helps move quickly to outcomes. The sessions are powered by SolveOS, a platform enabled by a real-time, AI content-capture engine that allows hundreds of pieces of hand-written, drawn, and video-captured content to be catalogued, tagged, and referenced, through both computer vision and natural language processing. Their model has been used successfully with diverse groups in business, education and community settings – and has delivered tangible outcomes that range from new programs to new products to new companies.
In May, I joined their team at the University of Denver where The New Bureau led a two-day session with a diverse community of students, faculty, administration, alum, vendors and industry experts including Arrow, Hitachi Vantara, and Splunk. Neighboring start-ups and community members interested in the concept of a smart connected campus in their area also joined. In an intense but very enjoyable way, the Smart Campus Open Innovation session provided a methodology that created common understanding of the problems, moved to possible solutions, and then defined specific outcomes and considerations for implementing a Smart Campus in Denver. What was even more impressive was that we didn’t walk out of the room leaving these good ideas on unintelligible flipcharts. Everything was systematically captured – photographed, logged, and shared back to the group for immediate next steps and accountability. And everyone who attended walked away with a new set of problem solving tools, encouraged to use the approach themselves to keep the momentum going.
Today The New Bureau announced the global Smart Campus Open Innovation Series http://bit.ly/1tnbprj18, accelerating problem solving for Smart Campuses and combining the power of crowdsourcing with the UN Global Goals. The ten-campus series will rapidly drive from ideation to productive and accountable momentum. The result of the series are open-source tools — crowdsourced from the best minds around the world, to speed the understanding and knowledge transfer from citizens, students, technologists, academics, enterprises, municipalities, and policy makers. I see this complementing very well other best practice sharing initiatives by being able to dive in and help specific campus communities accelerate their own implementable plans and outcomes. The New Bureau is now engaging with parties who want to be part of the early stage planning.
I am excited about this launch, and about its potential to help campuses and communities get focused and accelerate tangible results. If organizations are interested in learning more, or in participating as a campus or thought-leader partner, you can contact The New Bureau at https://www.newbureau.com/smart-campus-open-innovation-series/.
Let’s Start with Some Blocks
Do you agree? Do you think we use Smart Campuses as building blocks for Smart Cities? I’d welcome your perspective. Which Smart City solutions would you encourage Smart Campuses to include in defining their building blocks? Are there campus communities you know of who are ready to get “un-stuck,”who could leverage The New Bureau’s Smart Campus Open Innovation Series focused approach? Let’s chat. Maybe we can start with some Lego blocks. Who knows what amazing things we can create together!
