Dubuque Iowa, Building Constituencies on a Smarter Planet (by IBMSocialMedia)

How do you lead change to make things better in a smarter planet? Dubuque Iowa is working together across public and private organizations to drive change … in partnership with IBM. The city of Dubuque has come together and grown from an unemployment rate which was the highest in the United States at 23% in 1984 to having an unemployment rate that’s less than the state average. Running on a sustainability platform in 2005 Mayor Roy Buol was elected and then re-elected by working collaboratively across local, state and federal lines. The city is a model of how to built constituency—one that transformed Dubuque into “one of the 10 smartest cities on the planet”. The leadership lessons of Dubuque extend beyond issues of state and local government and sustainability to what can work for organizations of all sizes public or private, local or global.