How to Build Innovation Ecosystems in Africa | A Smarter Planet Blog Innovation ecosystems are complex organisms that are difficult to create yet tremendously powerful when they work. Think Silicon Valley. They require a melding of all of the capabilities of governments, businesses, financiers, universities, and individuals. Together, these organizations and individuals provide the web of support that makes it easier for startups to launch and grow quickly, and for established companies to innovate more aggressively. With that kind of support, African entrepreneurs and businesses will find it easier to produce new products and services, or even create whole new industries. You can think of an innovation ecosystem as a collective intelligence—harnessed for the good of society. IBM is committed to helping Africa build successful innovation ecosystems. The latest sign of this willingness is our new IBM Innovation Center in Nairobi, Kenya.

How to Build Innovation Ecosystems in Africa | A Smarter Planet Blog

Innovation ecosystems are complex organisms that are difficult to create yet tremendously powerful when they work. Think Silicon Valley. They require a melding of all of the capabilities of governments, businesses, financiers, universities, and individuals. Together, these organizations and individuals provide the web of support that makes it easier for startups to launch and grow quickly, and for established companies to innovate more aggressively. With that kind of support, African entrepreneurs and businesses will find it easier to produce new products and services, or even create whole new industries. You can think of an innovation ecosystem as a collective intelligence—harnessed for the good of society.

IBM is committed to helping Africa build successful innovation ecosystems. The latest sign of this willingness is our new IBM Innovation Center in Nairobi, Kenya.

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For IBM, Africa Is Risky and Rife With Opportunity | Bloomberg Businessweek For IBM and its new chief executive officer, Virginia “Ginni” Rometty, the problems of Kenya and elsewhere in Africa add up to a tantalizing opportunity. As IBM’s ubiquitous Smarter Planet ads never tire of mentioning, the company has consulting expertise in hardware, software, and data management systems it claims can improve agricultural productivity, government efficiency, and the performance of power grids and transportation networks. Much of Africa needs help in all of the above.

For IBM, Africa Is Risky and Rife With Opportunity | Bloomberg Businessweek

For IBM and its new chief executive officer, Virginia “Ginni” Rometty, the problems of Kenya and elsewhere in Africa add up to a tantalizing opportunity. As IBM’s ubiquitous Smarter Planet ads never tire of mentioning, the company has consulting expertise in hardware, software, and data management systems it claims can improve agricultural productivity, government efficiency, and the performance of power grids and transportation networks. Much of Africa needs help in all of the above.

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Technologies Every Smart City Should Have



You think cities are crowded now? By 2030, more than 5 billion people will live in urban settings. But before we get to that kind of population density, we have to optimize our cities. We need to make them smarter and better; technology can help.

Cities all around the world work with developers and contractors to make city living better, whether it’s improving the timing of traffic lights or creating a useful app, which becomes more powerful as smartphone penetration continues to increase. Apps and well-implemented technology can help cash-strapped governments save money and, be more efficient. Check out this list of 25 Technologies Every Smart City Should Have.

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City SDK | Helping cities open their data and giving developers the tools they need

WELCOME TO CITYSDK

CitySDK is creating a toolkit for the development of digital services within cities. The toolkit comprises of open and interoperable digital service interfaces as well as processes, guidelines and usability standards. CitySDK enables a more efficient utlisation of the expertise and know-how of developer communities to be applied in city service development.

The project is working in the areas of participation, mobility and tourism and has 8 cities across Europe as partners: Helsinki, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Manchester, Lamia, Istanbul, Lisbon and Rome.

If you are a city interested in the approach we are taking and would be interested in the interface and toolkit and if you are a developer looking to develop Apps that work in different European cities then get in touch.

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The amazing heart of a Smarter City: the innovation boundary « The Urban Technologist

We now have a greater purpose that demands innovation: the need to make our cities and communities more sustainable, vibrant and equal in the face of the severe economic, environmental and demographic pressures that we face; and that are well described in the Royal Society’s “People and the Planet” report

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All the evidence, including the scientific analysis of the behaviour and sustainability of city systems by the Physicist Geoffrey West, points to the need to create innovations that change the way that cities work.

But where will this innovation come from?

I think innovation of this sort takes place at an “innovation boundary”: the boundary between capability and need.

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Incentivizing Innovation for Cities: An Interview with Sascha Haselmayer

Open Source Cities spoke with Sascha Haselmayer, General Director and Co-Founder of Living Labs Global about the Living Labs Global Award and incentivizing service innovation in cities through competitions and open source citizen engagement.

Background
The Living Labs Global Award is open for submissions until February 17, 2012. The awards ceremony will be held in Rio de Janeiro in conjunction with the Rio Summit on Service Innovation in Cities.

The Living Labs Global Award is very impressive and ambitious in scope, with a large number of countries included in the program. How did Living Labs Global develop the format and concept for the competition?

In 2008 we put the first Showcase online – 35 solutions that could help cities, since there seemed to be no other resource. Thousands of users from around the world were accessing this simple catalogue. At the same time, our work in Living Labs Global focused on helping high impact technologies spread across cities and we found the same disconnect over-and-over: cities do not announce their problems, and as a result innovative businesses do not find the market with the right need among the 557,000 communities around the world.

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via opensourcecities:

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