A Smarter Planet

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A Business Thinker Asks: What Will It Take To Get Traction? (Guest post from e-Patient Dave)

The following blog post is by e-Patient Dave deBronkart, a prodigious blogger in the Health 2.0 movement and patient advisor to the Patient-Centric Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC).

I'm an e-patient: one of the new breed of patients who are "empowered, equipped, engaged and enabled," a breed first spotted in the wild by "Doc Tom" Ferguson, founder of http://e-patients.net. Two years ago a routine shoulder x-ray spotted something in my lung; it was metastasized kidney cancer, and it was so far along that my median survival time was 24 weeks.

This kind of news focuses the attention. One rapidly gets very interested in "What's gonna work? Like, right now??"

Building a Smarter Transportation System

The cost of congestion across the U.S. transportation system nears $200 billion each year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. What if those dollars could be spent on building a smarter, more efficient system? The results might resemble those in Stockholm, which reduced traffic by 25% and greenhouse gases by 40% working with IBM (video).

Laura Wynter from IBM Research, discusses how IBM is working to build smarter railways in some of the most complex transit systems in the world, partnering with Netherlands Railways, the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation,and Guanzhou Metro in China to improve the commute of millions of travelers every day. To learn more, tune in to the Congestion Remedies podcast and check out the Stockholm video:

בדרך לעולם חכם יותר

[Editor's note: periodically we will be featuring content from around the world. Below is a post from colleagues in Israel, with a translated version of the "Tale of a Smarter Planet"]

דווקא היום, בעולם מקושר ומרושת יותר מאי-פעם, כאשר משבר בחלקו האחד יכול לגרור משבר בחלקו האחר תוך ימים ואפילו בתוך מספר שעות, בשעה שהמשבר הפיננסי העולמי וההתחממות הגלובלית מאיימים על כולנו - יש לנו הזדמנות ייחודית באמצעות הטכנולוגיות והמערכות המתקדמות שעומדות לרשותנו להפיק ידע תבוני מהררי המידע, ליישם תהליכי עבודה חדשניים ויעילים יותר, לקדם פתרונות של חסכון באנרגיה ושיפור איכות הסביבה ולהפוך את עולמנו לעולם חכם יותר. סיפורו של עולם חכם...

Waterwork

Earlier this week, IBM shared a great deal of information with the world in regard to water. A book was published through our GIO effort, pages of content were published on IBM.com, we had announcements, videos, and more. In recent weeks, while IBM was preparing these materials, I began thinking about what aspect of this broad effort I would focus on for the podcast being released here today. As I worked through the preliminary materials, I was drawn to one particular subject among the many - water purification. 

An Opportunity to Invest in Smarter Skills and Curriculum Change

Following is a guest blog from Dr. Lee M. Miringoff and Dr. Barbara L. Carvalho from Marist College. Results of the Marist-IBM study can be found here on ibm.com.

President Obama said this week that education is key to the U.S. regaining its competitiveness. Speaking to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington D.C., he said that four out of 10 jobs will require at least some advanced education. He also pointed to health care reform and adopting energy efficiency processes as critical to the future of our country.

Smarter Water, Safer Water

We are going to be spending a lot of time this coming week talking about the most fundamental (and abundant) molecule to life: water. It not only sustains life physiologically, but also factors into all aspects of local and world economies. We'll have deeper commentary and perspective on the sociological and economic issues around water later in the week. In the meantime, I want to highlight two videos that capture some of the projects working to make water systems smarter and safer. First, comes from a project in Galway Ireland:

Better Healthcare with EMRs

In a brief interview, Dr. James King, board chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians, discusses how Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) can reduce medical errors and help doctors provide better care for their patients.  Download podcast  (3:16)

New Intelligence for Smarter Cities

If we want to build a Smarter Planet -- one where societal systems such as electricity and water distribution, healthcare and even physical infrastructure such as buildings and bridges become networks embedded with sensors and software -- there may be no better place to start than with our cities.

Today more than half the world's population lives in cities. By 2050 two-thirds of humanity are expected to be living in and around metropolitan centers. The 19.20.21 project notes that our world has become a network of "supercities."

 

Cities are a natural starting point for building a Smarter Planet because they are also where multiple infrastructures that we need to become more intelligent come together: transportation and traffic, food supply chains, retail stores and the places where people live and work. Of course, major cities are the nexus of economic, intellectual and social innovation as well.

Stimulus spending on health IT: Who will benefit?

Following is from Richard Steen, a Healthcare industry consultant from IBM.

The Obama administration’s stimulus program, with $19B in incentives for EMR and HIE adoption, has the potential to provide a real “shot in the arm” to our country’s healthcare IT infrastructure.  As barriers to EMR adoption lower, the nation’s health information topography could evolve organically as a virtual “neuro-net” connecting overlapping communities of interest. 

Less obvious is the developmental path for governance models that will surely be required to regulate data owners, gatekeepers, custodians, and permitted uses of protected health information.

Making Data Centers Smarter

The following guest blog is from Peter Van Deventer, CEO SynapSense Corporation

Core to the current administration’s stimulus package are appropriations to enable energy efficiency in buildings and what is widely known as the “smart grid.” As this need for a smarter infrastructure grows, that need carries over into the data center.  For most enterprises, the data center consumes up to one-third of the operation’s total power consumption, and on a national scale represents up to 2 percent of United States power consumption.  The criticality of power in the data center is not just consumption, but also functional limits on capacity and optimally efficient usage to defer the need for expensive infrastructure build out of new data center space. 

The Smarter Supply Chain Study: Video and Report

The Global Chief Supply Chain Officer Study kicked off in early March with a summit event in San Francisco. This video features Sanjeev Nagrath, who leads the global supply chain management practice in IBM's consulting unit, Global Business Services, and Karen Butner,with IBM's Institute of Business Value.

The case for health reform: New video and podcast

It doesn't come as a surprise to anybody that our health systems are in need of significant reform. Part of that reform is digitizing paper-based medical records. But simple digitization (Electronic Medical Records) is just the start. To illustrate at a high level some the opportunities for creating a smarter health system, we put together the following video:

 

For a much deeper discussion on this topic, though, listen to the latest "Building a Smarter Planet" podcast episode, with Dr. Russ Robertson, chairman of the Counsel of Medical Education at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and Dan Pelino, general manager of IBM's Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry.

Download the Building a Smarter Health System Podcast (mp3)

Smarter Healthcare - the most personal issue of all

Over the past few months, we've used this blog to talk about a lot of important issues we face as employees and citizens, ranging from traffic and banking to food and energy. But none of these topics resonates on a personal level quite as much as healthcare. Each of us cares intimately about the quality of our healthcare for ourselves, our families and our friends. We care about whether we have access to care, and whether we can afford it even if we do. And, finally, we care that we get the best care available when we need it most.

Smart ways to prepare for a world beyond recession

In the Financial Times op-ed today, IBM chairman Sam Palmisano suggests we focus stimulus development on projects that build competitive advantage in the different world that is taking shape.  He lists a few examples of these type of efforts underway, where is helping governments to build a smarter infrastructure.

• The island of Malta is creating one of the world’s most advanced smart grids and it is also building smarter water and waste management systems, using instrumentation with advanced sensor technology to gain a better understanding of demand, supply, routing and sourcing. 
  

• Stockholm has developed a dynamic new traffic management system to understand and predict vehicle patterns and encourage new behavior.  Traffic congestion is down by 20 percent and pollution by 12 percent. 
  

Read more in FT.com.

New Intelligence for Smarter Supply Chains

The groundwork for a Smarter Planet — a world of intelligent infrastructure for energy, healthcare, transportation and more — is arguably in place:  just consider the global web of supply chains that interlink the global economy.

These networks already weave together businesses, partners and customers into intricate, dynamic relationships. And they are functioning not just as the physical plumbing of economic activity, the literal means of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services, but also operate as complex information networks.

Smarter Planet is about enabling the world’s physical and digital networks to converge. That interaction can be advanced by embedding societal systems like supply chains with new kinds of sensors, software, and self-awareness. 

IBM's inaugural Global Chief Supply Chain Officer Study, which launches on Feb. 24th, focuses on just such an innovation: the supply chain of the future. The report is based on in-depth interviews with 400 executives responsible for the logistical networks that have become essential to the financial health of most companies that interconnect through them.

In fact, if a smarter planet can be broadly defined as one that is instrumented, interconnected and intelligent, those same characteristics apply to the smarter supply networks that serve as the world's arteries of commerce. 

The study’s five key findings focus on the challenges of cost containment, visibility (the ability to “see” and act on the right information), risk management, customer intimacy, and globalization as a growth opportunity.

Strategically, the study notes that:

“Building this kind of [smarter] supply chain is a strategic undertaking; it implies a different role and set of responsibilities for supply chain executives. These executives must become strategic thinkers, collaborators and orchestrators.”

What will make these webs of production and distribution smarter? Different kinds of sensors and information technologies will make supply networks more instrumented and interconnected. But what’s ultimately required are the analytical resources to extract new, actionable intelligence from such complex systems. What kind of new intelligence do we mean, and what actually is new about it?

“New intelligence” will flow from advanced computing techniques and expertise that can reveal insight from rivers of real-time information. Innovations in data visualization, predictive modeling and simulation software will make new kinds of knowledge possible, and lead to more evidence-based decision making.  (For examples, see these posts on our companion site on Tumblr tagged "new Intelligence.")

As the study reports, managers need to peer through the "data fog" of supply chain information not just to better perceive their own operations, but to gain visibility into what’s happening across the network that extends to partners and customers. 

As strategic and practical as data sharing across this extended supply chain might seem, one unexpected finding on data visibility was that “many executives reported that their organizations are too busy to share information or simply do not believe collaborative decision making is that important.”

That sensibility may change as new intelligence tools help supply network professionals make better decisions and spot strategic patterns and trends.

The study revealed another pressing issue for supply chain managers: their need for better tools to manage risk and deal with disruptions. Consider current problems with contaminations in our complex supply chains for food, toys and other products that need to be recalled. Smarter supply chains embedded with sensors and software can help trace such quality control issues back to their source, as well as to more rapidly identify where suspect inventory has been distributed.

If advanced supply chains will be like the nervous system of a smarter planet's body — its eyes, ears and sense of touch — then this new intelligence will be the brains to help us gain new understanding and greater mastery over these  complex economic ecosystems. And the new links in smarter supply chains, factories, office buildings and highways will include such elements as wireless sensor networks, GPS, actuators, radio frequency identity (RFID) tags, and other kinds of monitoring equipment. 

RFID tags already widely used in shipping and inventory control, but can enable products to be embedded with even more precise and dynamic data. For example, fish caught off the coast of South America could be tagged to authenticate exactly when and where they were taken, and their temperature en route to market tracked to prove freshness and legal provenance. Or the diverse products that a hotel chain or government agency buys could be measured for how "green" they are in terms of manufacturing processes and overall carbon footprint.

(In fact, IBM has just announced a Supply-chain Network Optimization service (SNOW) that is  a harbinger of such new intelligence resources. Another is Carbon Management Analysis tool 

that debuted last year.)

So what about this "new intelligence" distinguishes it from the kind of data-mining and information-crunching commonly done today? Of course, the volumes of data involved in supply chain management are already huge, but will grow exponentially. What's really different is the variety of kinds of data  — geospatial or location-based information, digital multimedia and environmental conditions to name just a few — and the unique insights that we may glean from finding correlations across such diverse sources.

Another major new characteristic is the velocity with which supply chain data flows, and the concomitant speed needed to capture and process it to be useful. Complex traffic patterns, millions of financial transactions per second, video from tens of thousands of security cameras, are examples of where we need to be able to sift not just static mountains of data, but dynamic, changing information torrents. 

Indeed, for information from smart systems to be most valuable, it often needs to be processed in seconds, minutes or hours rather than days. We need to be able to find and analyze digital needles in haystacks that are not stationary, but rolling past on fast-moving trucks.

The need for speed is also about getting rapid return on this new intelligence so that it can be applied right now to help the world's economy — and all the businesses in the complex economic webs that make up supply chains  — get back on our collective feet.

Finally, if you're in need for some inspiration about the power of deep data and statistics to tell us important things about the world, and to give us new insights into the changes happening around us, this presentation by Hans Rosling, a professor of global health at Sweden's  Karolinska Institute,

 is a treat and a mind-opener.

Jack Mason

Strategic Programs, IBM Global Business Services

Broadband Over Powerlines - Rural America’s Key to Tomorrow’s Broadband Services

The following is from Grady Smith, CEO of Cullman Electric Cooperative, in Cullman, AL.

In the 1930’s only 10 percent of rural American households were served by electricity. As the REA and the TVA brought power to unserved regions, public power companies were faced with a double challenge. Not only did we have the duty of building infrastructure that would take electricity to the countryside, but we also had to educate our communities on how this new technology could be applied to enhance their lives.

Seven decades later, we face the same challenge. But instead of electricity, it is broadband service that is on course to change our lives. The delivery of voice, data and even video at high speeds is the culmination of years of research and development that began with basic consumer dial-up service in the early 1990’s. I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that broadband service is the single most important technological issue of this generation, and that it will have the greatest impact on society since basic electricity and telephone service.

At Cullman Electric Cooperative, we have kept a watchful eye on an emerging technology known as ‘broadband over power lines,’ or BPL. The possibilities are incredible. As Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told BusinessWeek a few years ago: “Think about it… if every electrical plug becomes a broadband port, that would be huge.”

Our interest in this issue naturally stems from the fact that it could dramatically impact our industry. But beyond that, we see BPL as a technology that could become particularly important to homes and businesses in rural areas like those served by Cullman Electric Cooperative.

The industry has moved beyond the question “can voice, data and video be transmitted effectively, safely and rapidly over power lines?”. Research has provided an affirmative answer. Now the questions are “can this technology be deployed to the masses economically?” and “will the equipment stand the test of time?”.

To help answer these questions — and new ones as they arise — Cullman Electric Cooperative is involved in one of the few live BPL pilot programs going on in the nation. We have partnered with IBM and International Broadband Electric Communications, Inc. (IBEC) of Huntsville, Alabama, to turn our lines and poles into a research facility. IBM and IBEC’s knowledge of BPL technology is joining forces with our experience and expertise as an electric utility to validate two distinct BPL applications.

The first is distribution system security through video surveillance. IBEC’s equipment is consistently sending real-time video of a stretch of power line and our headquarters back to a designated central monitoring facility. This could prove invaluable as our industry moves toward more stringent security regulations, allowing us to forego considerable costs by using existing infrastructure to transmit video.

The second application is broadband Internet service to locations within our system. I am pleased to report that several of our members are involved in this pilot, and that they are successfully uploading and downloading data through an ‘always-on’ Internet connection via an electrical outlet.

There are still other applications of this technology to explore. Cullman Electric Cooperative could one day monitor and control our remote equipment through BPL. This technology could also allow us to read our meters remotely.

Another exciting possibility is a wireless network that would allow any customer with a password to access the Internet from any location that was near a power line — in their home or office, on the road or on a park bench.

Studies estimate that 37 percent of Americans live in areas that most likely will never be served by broadband service via cable or DSL. I believe our customers should be able to enjoy the benefits of rural life without being left behind in terms of technology. BPL may well be the means whereby public power companies once again take bold steps — just like we did 70 years ago — to bring the power of technology to rural America and thereby change people’s lives for the better.

Grady Smith is the CEO of Cullman Electric Cooperative in Cullman, AL

Smarter Planet on Tumblr Goes Mobile

The companion to this blog, our Smarter Planet site on Tumblr, is what feeds the "Related Discussions Across the Internet" links in the left hand navigation.

As Tumblr aptly describes its platform, if a blog is more like a journal or longer-form discussion format, a "tumblelog" is more like a scrapbook. Posts are brief, multimedia and in our case, cover the waterfront of news, developments, sites, insights and examples of how a smarter planet is emerging. Our goal is to give people a broad feel for what smarter planet means, and how widely it is taking shape.

And now we've i mplemented a version of the site optimized for mobile devices.  So be sure to add  http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com/mobile to your iPhone, Blackberry or other device bookmarks.

Of course, this mobile iteration isn't just a convenience for the rapidly growing ranks of mobile internet users. The explosion of web-enabled smartphones and other handheld devices loaded with sensors such as cameras, microphones and GPS chips is one of the most salient signs of the "internet of things" and "ubiquitous computing" that is central to what Smarter Planet is all about.

Jack Mason
IBM Global Business Services, Strategic Programs & Social Media Innovation

Guest Blog: Smarter telecommunications

We asked Gary Gohen, who leads IBM's Communications Sector, for some perspective on the opportunity for building a smarter telecommunications system. Below are some of this thoughts:

In working with IBM’s clients in the telecommunications industry, I hear directly from business leaders around the world about the ways their companies can play a role in building a smarter planet by helping to change the way our global communications infrastructure works.  And in almost all of these discussions, we talk about the need to improve dramatically the economics of service delivery across all aspects of their businesses, and about new and emerging business models for communications service providers.

These companies are seeing first-hand how billions of people and intelligent devices are driving an incredible increase in global communication.  Today, mobile Web subscriptions are at four billion, and counting.  By 2011, almost a third of all humanity will be on the Internet.  New investments in broadband infrastructures worldwide will likely accelerate this growth, extending the Internet into new markets, and broadening its reach inside existing markets, as more people within established economies gain affordable access to broadband Internet.

All of this growth in demand represents a huge opportunity for telecommunications companies, but to take advantage of it and stay ahead in the ferociously competitive marketplace, they know they need to develop new capabilities.  Today's networks will have to become smarter, so they can have the kind of intelligence and analytical capability needed to make sense of the flood of data coming from billions (and eventually, trillions) of connected people and sensors and devices.  They will need more flexible, open architectures, so new services can be created and deployed to meet the rapidly changing needs of people who want individually customized services.  The kind of evolved, converged information technology system you have to have to support these kinds of  capabilities is something IBM calls the dynamic infrastructure.

The transformation is already underway:  For example, telecom service providers in India are facing both explosive growth and intense competition.  To gain a competitive advantage, some are reinventing their IT to provide deeper connections between business units, the data they generate, and the processes they need to run efficiently.  One of India's largest telecom service providers used this model to cut the time required to activate new mobile accounts by 90 percent.  When you sign about a million new customers per month, that type of agility is a serious advantage.

In China, a leading telecom company is using social networking technology to bring together the ideas and expertise of company researchers to create new services at a record pace.  While in Europe, a provider of both fixed telephony and Internet services is working with us to completely redesign and integrate its business processes to give it the speed and flexibility it needs to meet subscriber demand and capitalize on skyrocketing growth in its home market.

In Indonesia, we're working with a leading telecom service provider on a network management systems that infuses software into its physical communications network to automatically detect and resolve service problems.  The system can go further to predict trends in the way its network is used -- and adjust accordingly to provide the best possible service to customers.

Successful business models in the global telecommunications industry are increasingly based on this "smarter" approach that leverages instrumented, connected, intelligent systems.  With governments and companies worldwide investing in expanding broadband access, and with more people and "intelligent" things coming online by the minute, this is a great time to think about ways to build a smarter telecommunications infrastructure together.

Gary Cohen is the General Manager of IBM's communications sector.

*** Update: Given the topic above, we wanted to share this related video about the preponderance of connected objects and the potential impact for a smarter planet:

New employees and a smarter planet

New Employees And A Smarter Planet

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: smarterplanet planet)

It's sometimes difficult to resonate with strategic visions such as building a smarter planet. Executives and thought-leaders can make a big difference, but what can an ordinary employee do to help make things happen?

Me, I've been with IBM for a little over a year, having joined it right after finishing my master's degree. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by all the changes happening in the business world, and I wonder what how I can help make things better. Whether you're also new at work or you've been there for a while but you still don't consider yourself an experienced decision-maker, you probably know what I'm talking about.

As I thought about how I can help build a smarter planet, I realized that new employees like me can contribute something, too.

I often find myself asking people questions about the way things work. "Why?" "Why not?" "What if..." Most of the time, I learn that there are great reasons why people do what they do. Sometimes, though, my questions get people to reexamine assumptions, and we figure out even better ways to work.

If you're a new employee, you might be worried about asking silly questions to which everyone else knows the answers. Go ahead and ask. Maybe you'll uncover some assumptions or inefficiencies, and you'll help make things better along the way. If you're working with new employees, be open to suggestions and new ways of working. Who knows? Maybe you'll pick up a tip or two.

As a new employee, there's so much for me to learn. I'm really lucky that I can share what I'm learning with my coworkers through internal blogs, bookmarks, and wikis. Not only does recording what I'm learning help me learn more effectively, it also helps me share what I'm learning with more people, and I end up documenting all sorts of knowledge.

If you're a new employee, write down what you're learning and share your notes with your coworkers. If you're managing new employees, set up ways for people to share what they know.

I'm learning a lot, and I really love what I'm doing. Some people tell me that's because I'm young and I'm new to the company, and I remember reading a book that said most new employees lose their enthusiasm after six months. I've met lots of other people who've shown by example that you can still be passionate about your work after decades, though, so I still have hope! I'm passionate about what I do, and people tell me that they find my enthusiasm infectious. I help them feel happier and more motivated about their work, and that helps them perform better.

If you're a new employee, stay in touch with the reasons you liked the job offer, and discover new reasons to be passionate about what you do. If you work with or manage new employees, help them stay engaged by connecting them with people who are passionate about their work, and help them harness their passion and infect others with their energy.

Even new employees can help build a smarter company. Even new employees can help build a smarter planet. Let's make it happen.

---
Sacha Chua is an Enterprise 2.0 consultant and application developer with IBM Global Business Services. She helps organizations learn more about Web 2.0 tools and concepts, incorporate those into their business strategies, design and develop solutions, and make the most of those tools through coaching and adoption support. She also helps companies understand Generation Y, which she belongs to. She has been with IBM for a little over one year. Her personal blog is at http://livinganawesomelife.com.

Malta and IBM to build world’s first national smart utility grid

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As reported by Fortune.com, IBM is teaming with the Mediterranean island nation of Malta to build a smart utility system.  The plans include replacing:

"250,000 utility meters with interactive versions that will allow Malta’s electric utility, Enemalta, to monitor electricity use in real-time and set variable rates that reward customers that cut their power consumption.  As part of the $91 million (€70 million) project, a sensor network will be deployed on the grid  -  along transmission lines, substations and other infrastructure - to provide information that will let the utility more efficiently manage electricity distribution and detect potential problems." 

 **Update: More at Earth2Tech

Guest Blog: What Exactly is a Smart Grid?

With the increased attention around smart grids, we asked Jeffrey Katz, the chief technology officer of IBM’s Energy & Utilities industry to share some of his thoughts on the opportunities for building a smarter energy infrastructure. He is currently representing IBM at the DistribuTech Conference in San Diego, and sent us the following:

Building a smart grid is a complex undertaking. It requires new technologies that affect an infrastructure system with massive, wide-reaching influence. The benefits, however, are clear and worth the investment.

With a smart grid, improvements to the underlying power utilities infrastructure are much easier, less costly and more efficient. Smart grids provide tremendous amounts of data that can be analyzed in real time to help predict maintenance problems and equipment failures, and can be used to better forecast capital equipment expenditures. For consumers, smart grids will open an array of new services that better match their unique needs and habits. Consumers will have more control and be able to “communicate” with the grid, making decisions based on their personal usage patterns, such as planning for better use of renewable energy when available.

With such an important undertaking, however, it becomes important for people to understand what is meant by “smart grids” in the first place. Based on work we’ve done with electric power utilities across the world, we’ve noticed a number of common characteristics one would associate with a smart grid.

First, a smart grid requires the deep integration of Information Technology and Operational Technology – two parts of a utility company that have traditional not shared much common ground. Much of the “smartness” of the new grid results from the symbiotic nature of these two areas, with IT precepts being adopted into the realm of the relays and reclosers, and the non-stop reliability requirements of the transformers and trucks being adopted into the automation and IT processes.

Next, security is essential in the smart grid. Just as bank robberies have largely moved from physical banks to cyberspace, smart grid vulnerabilities are likely to be digital in nature. Security must be built into the grid at the outset to prevent to any kind of malicious attacks or disruptions. Based on experience across many industries, we’ve developed a number of methodologies at IBM to mitigate these risks.

Another important characteristic of smart grids are the ability of far-flung electric power systems to communicate across the network. Just as the brain can sense and respond to damaged nerves throughout the body, so too can a smart grid’s central nervous system react to situations throughout the power network. A smart grid’s communication links are vital to sensing grid activity and emanating control signals for grid optimization work, including demand response.

With such complexity, a smart grid needs to be implemented in phases. It is physically impossible to add the integrated sensing, communication, and analytics required all at once. Even beyond the pilot stage, rolling upgrades will occur with service territories, and utilities will have different criteria for evaluating what parts get smart, and in which order. When the telephone system got smarter consumers didn't have to replace their phone; the transformation happened invisibly in the central offices. Similarly, upgrading the electrical grid needs to proceed without disruptions to consumers. The electric grid is more pervasive, bulkier, more obvious, and more distributed than the telecommunications network, and as such, will take longer to automate.

Making that jump to a twenty-first century electrical system signifies major changes for the electric power industry, but companies need not go it alone. Benchmarks, models and training are available to help companies make the transition. For example, we worked with the American Productivity and Quality Center to produce the Smart Grid Maturity Model, assessing where a company is and where it may want to go in the smart grid circuit. Also, resources from the Grid Wise Alliance Architectural Council and the EPRI IntelliGrid initiative can help power companies transition to a smarter grid.

An intelligent utility network is a major part of the future electric power industry. I would be interested in hearing your views as well. Please feel free to share in the comments below.

Jeffrey S. Katz is the Chief Technology Officer in the Energy and Utilities industry at IBM. Previously he was with ALSTOM Power Plant Labs and before that at ABB Corporate Research. He can be reached at jskatz@us.ibm.com

Bringing the "New Intelligence" Down to Earth: Intro to Semantic Web, Internet-of-Things

My colleague Adam Christensen wants to make Smarter Planet something that matters to each of us: something that more people can understand, appreciate and maybe even feel some degree of personal, emotional connection to. 

I couldn't agree more. First, because the changes envisioned through Smarter Planet, and the challenges to making them happen, are big. Huge even. Building the new infrastucture the world needs to solve our energy, healthcare and environmental dilemmas isn't really an abstraction. In fact it is possibly the largest and most daunting task in human history. But the scale of that ambition is also what makes this frontier so meaningful and interesting: the mother of all Manhattan projects.

Of course, turning global "complex systems" -- like the network that makes up how food is grown, distributed and consumed -- into something safer, smarter and more sustainable sounds nice. It's just may not be something that individuals feel like they can touch or effect, no matter how desirable the goal may seem.ill

The same thing goes for the idea that the Web we know today may be on the verge of becoming something deeply different: an Internet of trillions of things, with practically every imaginable object connected to it, flowing into it. That may sound cool or interesting to some, but for many, the real reaction to the idea of "ubiquitous computing" may be "so what?" or "why should I care?"

The short answer, I think, is that this new world won't just be the Internet, only more. It's real promise is to give us better ability to innovate our way out of the real looming threats ahead. By the middle of this century, now just four decades away, human population will almost certainly jump from six billion people to nine billion, possibly twelve. And many of those new billions will be following the lifestyles of the developed world.  As one obsever in India recently noted, it would take three Earths to support that many people using the same amount of energy and resources that Americans alone consume today.

So to help people understand, and I hope, care more about some of these tectonic technology changes afoot, I've found video clips to make two of these key ideas a little easier to grasp.

First, to make the Internet-of-Things concept a bit more accessible, I stumbled on this clip about a new device, called Mir:ror, from an unusual company called Violet. It shows how smart "tags" or radio frequency identity (RFID) chips could change the way everyday physical objects may become intergrated into our digital lives. (Such "smart tags" are already revolutionizing industrial product managment in areas such as shipping, logistics and inventory control.)

For more on the Internet of Things, see this set of posts tagged "internet-of-things" on the Smarter Planet site on Tumblr.

In addition to the Web becoming more instrumented and interconnected, with more kinds of devices, objects and sensors feeding into it, another big component of the "new intelligence" is what some called Web 3.0, or the Semantic Web.

This emerging front is about the ability for pieces of data, applications and all kinds of content to "talk" or interact with other informational objects. A picture or video could describe not just when and where it was taken, but what it depicts.  A small software program could receive or give instructions on how it might interoperate with another application. 

If Web 2.0 -- today's world of social networks and a renaissance in interpersonal communications and user-generated content-- is defined by people being better able to share and collaborate, this next phase will enable data and programs to similarly intermingle and generate new innovations. 

The Semantic Web is still very much a work in progress, and not the easiest idea to wrap one's head around, but this clip -- Intro to The Semantic Web -- offers a brief and accessible overview of some of the main principles.

In a very rough sense,  these two ideas together form the foundation of what we're calling the New Intelligence -- an Internet that is wired up to the physical world via many new kinds of sensors, smart tags, and devices, and a new architecture that enables data to start behaving in rich new ways.

In practical terms, this new field of knowledge should help businesses make better predictions and more judicious decisions, and via such an improved management model, reduce risk and facilitate growth. But such an expansion of the intellectual and informational toolbox at our disposal should also pave the way for new areas of scientific research and exploration.

To get a broader view of this new intelligence horizon, take a look at the channel of related posts on the Tumblr site, and this section of www.ibm.com/think.

 

 

Jack Mason

IBM Global Business Services, Strategic Programs

Economic Stimulus Remarks from IBM's CEO at the White House

*** Update: Some further remarks about the visit on Whitehouse.gov with this quote from President Obama:

And it will invest in broadband and emerging technologies, like the ones imagined and introduced to the world by people like Sam and so many of the CEOs here today, because that's how America will retain and regain its competitive edge in the 21st century.

***

Earlier today, IBM CEO, Sam Palmisano, participated in a roundtable discussion of business leaders with President Obama to discuss the economy. Sam was also asked to give a brief speech. For readers of this blog, note the connection between building a smarter infrastructure and smarter planet with the opportunity to climb our way out of the current economic crisis. (I've added italics for emphasis).

You can watch the video here on CNBC.

Or, you can read the full transcript below:

***

Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM CEO Statement, White House, January 28, 2009

Mr. President – Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I think we’ll agree that across America… and around the world – from board rooms, to cabinet rooms, to kitchen tables – people are fixated on what’s necessary to address the present economic emergency. There’s a gathering global consensus that bold and aggressive steps are needed, on both business and government working together to address what’s required to help the worldwide economies.

In the past several days, I have been in contact with many leaders in the corporate world.  But I think there is a unanimous commitment to support the President.

•    We all agree we need to re-ignite economic growth in the country,
•    we know we must create not just jobs for 21st century jobs,
•    and therefore we need to invest and to build a more modern and more competitive infrastructure for the future.

There is clearly no reason we believe to undertake projects just for the sake of activity. We need to undertake projects that actually create jobs that will make infrastructure, make our country much more competitive for the long term. It is a balancing act between the short term crisis and what we need to do for the long term.

We really believe all this possible is possible today for many reasons because a convergence of factors. One because of the technology itself as well as the economic need we find our selves in and the current situation.

As a country we have to compete in the world. Yes is flatter, yes it is smaller. But we would argue it is also smarter. And today you’ll see technology embedded in processes and systemic systems from everything from environmental – between water to energy conservation –  to basic supply chains for global business.

So, the world does have a much smarter infrastructure, and therefore the base to build for the future. It’s there. We are excited. I can’t tell you how excited we are about the president’s commitment to lead us to the future. And the support for Health IT, and support in the area of smart grids, support in the area of education and broadband. All those things are essential. They are essential in the short term. And because of the research we’ve done in working with the transition team, we know that $30 billion could create a million jobs in the next 12 months. But it’s also every bit as important that we touch so factors of the ecosystem that it will create jobs for decades to come.

We are honored to be here. I’m honored to be speaking on behalf of the business community. It’s imperative that business and government come together to help the President get the package through and we get to work. We have a lot of work ahead of us.

Thank you for your time.

****

Podcast: How do we build a smarter financial system?

Download the Building a Smarter Financial System Podcast (mp3)

It can't be a good sign that complex financial topics have begun to dominate dinner-table conversations. But the dire situation in which we find our economies extend far beyond the inner circles of the finance elite.

In this episode of the Building a Smarter Planet podcast series, we focus on the financial services industry and interview Stephen Hsu, professor of physics at the University of Oregon, Jeanne Capachin, an analyst at Financial Insights, Carl Abrams, financial services business manager within IBM Research, and Keith Saxton, global director in IBM's financial markets industry.

In the podcast, we try and probe our experts to understand more clearly some of the causes of the current financial crisis and get some ideas on how we can build a system smarter than the one we have today.

During the course of the interviews, it became clear to me that there's consensus on a number of areas:

First, it's clear that the current regulatory environment isn't well equipped to appropriately manage risk in an incredibly complex interconnected financial system. This leads to big questions around how to coordinate regulations that extend beyond country borders, as well as what powers, authorities and policies should be in place to avert future calamities.

Second, transparency - everybody's favorite word - is easier said than done. We need more transparency across many parts of the system - particularly the shadow banking system - but we also need better tools to actually understand the data that is being reported. In fact, the intelligent analysis of data is perhaps the biggest gap in the system today.

Third, while it's certainly true technology has played a role in increasing the complexity of the system, there's no getting around the fact that technology will play a huge role in getting us out of it. Technology that helps to make sense of complexity, that detects growing concentrations of unknown risk, and that interprets and analyzes massive piles of unstructured data in real time, holds the key to a smarter system in the future.

And fourth, despite restructuring of regulations, transparency and technology, human behavior also needs to change to make the system smarter. Consumers and shareholders need to understand their financial institutions better before they will begin to have trust in the system. And incentive structures throughout the financial services industry need to be realigned with the long-term benefits of the institutions, and economies in which they operate.

But those are just some of the thoughts of the experts on this podcast. As you look at the system around us, how would you build a smarter financial system?

Smart grids modeled after the Internet: the Energy Web

What if the energy grid worked like the Internet? You'd have a completely flexible network that links producers, suppliers and consumers in a system that enables entrepreneurs to build "apps" on top of the smart grid. Drew Clark, from IBM's Venture Capital Group, outlines the benefits of an "Energy Web" in this post on the VC blog. To quote from the post, written just prior to the inauguration:

One interesting thought that is making the rounds of the Obama transition team as well as those poised for investment into this emerging 'Smart Grid' sector is the notion of a national "energy web". This energy web, in concept, would be architected and deployed in a similar way to what we built back in the DARPA days, where a relatively large amount of US treasury was allocated to build a robust and resilient data exchange infrastructure, based on a set of open (TCP/IP) standards. Perhaps even more significantly, we all know the "killer app" that subsequently emerged that was built upon the Internet in the mid-90s --  it's something we now refer to almost as if it's a basic  natural resource - the Web.

But what if we could build a second killer app to help address, on a large scale, this imperative to provide an intelligent, collaborative network that links energy producers/sources, with operators and utilities, and ultimately with energy consumers both big and small. An energy cloud, if you will, that will link all of the key energy stakeholders, while providing a secure means of knowing where and how much energy is needed at all times. Energy Web would  require not only the emergence of standard interfaces, but also the physical infrastructure to support a way of distributing not only power, but information, requiring a broad range of intelligent devices.

Further, what if we could build this energy web as a robust but accessible (programmable) platform that would encourage and catalyze innovation around the idea that we need thousands of entrepreneurs building "apps", applications and services that address these enormous but critically important challenges of moving to renewable energy sources as fast as is feasible, but done smartly and cost-effectively? Think of it as an "iPhone AppStore for Energy' or something similar...imagine if we could bring even a fraction of the 10,000+ apps built for this popular mobile device to bear on key areas like demand response, modeling & simulation, energy efficiency & conservation, usage monitoring, real-time pricing, etc.

What we need to do as a community of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, in my opinion, is to band together to drive interest and investment into such a project, beginning with some top-down support from the incoming administration, to the definition of a set of architectures and standards that will help us get started down this path.

This isn't possible, though, without the initial investment in creating a true smart grid. It's something that we've been talking about for a while here. We were invited by then President-Elect Obama to  share our recommendations with his transition team. And judging from recent comments by the Obama Administration, it seems that investment in smart grids are looking more promising by the day.

The Tale of a Smarter Planet

"A butterfly flaps its wings in China, and sometime later a thunderstorm drenches Chicago . . ." These words open video below "The Tale of a Smarter Planet." This is a story that touches upon aspects of so many of our lives as we enter into this era of change. The bottom line? We now have the tools to literally change the way the world works.




The challenges and opportunities ahead of us are far too large, various and inherently global for any government, industry or nation to tackle alone. It will take all of civil society to transform the way the world works. And the good news is, we can. This goes far beyond repairing the old economy. We can now prepare a new one, for the 21st century. Computational power is being put into things we wouldn’t recognize as computers — phones,cameras, cars, appliances, roadways, power lines, clothes. We are interconnecting all of this through the Internet, which has come of age. There is a tremendous mandate today for positive change, and this moment will not last forever. Let’s seize it — not simply to fix a flawed past, but to build a smarter future.

Avoiding the Risk of Sea Monsters with "New" Intelligence

Of the many client problems IBM works to solve, I don't think "Sea Monsters" has ever made the list.  Although to be fair, I haven't checked with the folks at Hursley.  Maybe our animation isn't representative. 

More on the Proposed Stimulus Package from IBM's CEO

At the risk of being redundant, I want to share a few recent items that reinforce the points that Chris Caine brought up here on this blog last week.

First, over the weekend CNN aired an interview of IBM's CEO, Sam Palmisano talking about the economy, the recession and the opportunity to build a smarter infrastructure system.

And earlier today, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion article from Sam, "Let's Spend on Broadband and the Power Grid" that makes the case for investment in three areas: broadband, smart grids and electronic health records. I think the subtitle of the article captures the premise best: "Not all stimulus is created equal." Only the right stimulus investments will drive future economic growth. Consider this anecdote from the article:

We can learn a lot from the network effect of the stimulus investments in the Interstate highway system of the 1950s. Back then, our economic system was analog. Building a new highway system sped the movement of physical assets, creating a new high-speed transportation system that enabled businesses to expand much more quickly, helping drive economic growth for decades.

Today, we live in a digital world. Many of our most valuable assets are online, traded virtually. As a result, communities with broadband access grow employment at a significantly higher rate. And yet today, the United States, the country that developed the Internet, ranks 12th in broadband penetration and 15th in average broadband speed. This is unacceptable if we want our nation to compete in the 21st century.

Economic growth, then can best be achieved by aligning investments with the realities of our current and future economic structure.

Now, I want to be clear. IBM has a lot to gain from these investment areas. We don't hide that fact. But that doesn't mean these aren't the right areas to invest, nor does it mean IBM is the only beneficiary. From the chart in Chris' post, you can see that the majority of jobs created by this investment will come from the small business sector, which by definition enhances local economic vitality.

But enough from us; what are your ideas? Are we in sync with where you think investments should (or shouldn't) be made? And what are your recommendations for the Obama administration?

Igniting the New Intelligence

How the Deep Web and Petaflop Power will put the smart in Smarter Planet

Smarter Planet means intelligent infrastructure for our energy grids, transportation systems, food supply chains and healthcare networks. Ok, got that part.

It is also about trillions of devices and objects connecting to the internet and changing the way billions of people live and work. Check.

But the real revolutionary and truly transformative frontier may be the one that is this week's focus: a New Intelligence, the leap in knowledge and insight that will come from new ways to process the large and diverse sea of information that smart systems and the “Internet of things” will generate.

For individuals, these new smarts could be manifest in things like digitally enhanced memory, what some are calling a “life log” that captures, stores, and organizes an electronic collection of everything you do or would want to save: conversations, images, transactions and interactions of every kind, all searchable and as accessible as your biological memory. Augmented memory made it into IBM's  latest Five in Five report, which focuses on five technologies that may change the way we live in the next five years.  

This new intelligence also promises to serve your health and wellness. Not only could all of your lifelong healthcare-related data securely collect in a kind of online health data bank, but new computing and sensing built into your clothes and environment would continually monitor the state of your health. Together these resources, along with the growth of personalized genomic medicine, could keep you healthier by catching any early signs of illness so that doctors could then proscribed advanced preventative care.

For businesses, the New Intelligence will offer richer and more realtime ways to run a company, including better ways to forecast market trends, make smarter decisions and have a more precise awareness of every facet of a firm’s operations and performance.

For society, this ability to understand and probe the world at a fundamentally new and deeper level will enable scientists and researchers to hunt more effectively for solutions to our most pressing problems, such as clean energy, climate change and water scarcity.

This idea of an evolutionary jump in the IQ of the world may seem on the one hand fanciful, and on the other, a bit abstract. But several of the new Smarter Planet ads that launched this weekend bring the concept back down to Earth, like this one, called Smarter Petaflop.

The world may be becoming a more complex, and information-intensive, place, but at the heart of this vision for New Intelligence are two basic ingredients. 

• Unprecedented new sources, and quantities, of information

• New processing power and programs to turn raw data into a more valuable commodity: insight and intelligence that humans can use.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll just touch on one example that illustrates the two sides of the new intelligence coin. 

Data Mining the "Deep Web"

Almost anyone can sense that the amount of information in the age of the Internet grows relentlessly. In fact, the Web we see or come across in searches is literally the tip of the info-iceberg. This “surface Web” is about 167 terabytes of data, while the larger, total amount of information on the Internet, the so-called Deep Web or Deepnet, is estimated to contain about 91,000 terabytes.  We are already in the era of Big Data.

Powering Up the Petabyte Age

A petabyte is 1,000 terabytes, or 1M gigabytes. To put that in perspective, Facebook stores about a petabyte of user photos, or roughly 10 billion pictures. Fortunately, the power to process this deluge is keeping pace.

That information arms race is being enabled by supercomputers like IBM’s Roadrunner, housed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory, which in 2008 broke the “petaflop” barrier, or more than a quadrillion calculations a second.

Indeed, the Web itself is becoming a vast platform for computing and data processing, through new techniques like grid computing, which harness the data crunching power of idle computers and devices around the world, or cloud computing which turns the fabric of the Web itself into a processing layer.

One of the ways in which all this digital horsepower can extract insight from massive sets of data is to build very sophisticated models that can simulate and predict the solutions to complex challenges like how protein molecules fold, understanding weather patterns and environmental conditions, or optimizing logistical nightmares like global airline routes.

Down the road, even more powerful models, based on emerging frontiers such as quantum computing or cognitive computing (which seeks to mimic the power of the human brain) will open up new ways to squeeze even more useful intelligence from our ever-growing sources of information, often in close to realtime when that new knowledge may be most valuable.

Finally, it may be less sexy than the long-term promise, but some of the most immediate uses for the new intelligence are going to be in the operational nuts and bolts of business, fueling the productivity and efficiency gains that will empower enterprises to recover from the current economic crisis and get back to growth and innovation.

You can sample some of the posts around New Intelligence that we’ve collected as a “channel” on the Smarter Planet Tumblr site that complements this blog.  And you can learn more about the New Intelligence on http://www.ibm.com/think.

Of course, all of us are smarter than any of us. So what does this New Intelligence model mean to you, and where do you see it going?

Jack Mason

IBM Global Business Services, Strategic Programs

jkmason@us.ibm.com

Investing in smarter infrastructure will create more than 949,000 new jobs in 2009

While much has been written and said about President-elect Barack Obama’s statements to invest heavily in the infrastructure of the United States, not enough attention has been given to ensuring we connect our physical and digital infrastructures to create new 21st century systems. We need to make a conscious decision to leap forward, boost productivity, and create comparative advantage for our nation in a global economy.

Though many studies exist about how many jobs can be created by investing in traditional physical infrastructure, none exist for the digital corollary. So, at IBM’s request, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) conducted a study that showed investing three areas of the nation’s IT infrastructure would yield more than 940,000 new jobs each year.

At the invitation of the incoming U.S. Administration, IBM's CEO, Sam Palmisano, recently presented the findings and recommendations from this study to Barack Obama’s transition team. I want to share with you a few of the key findings.

Most notably, the study yielded three specific recommendations of where the U.S. Government should invest for maximum, high value job creation: Broadband, Health IT and Smart Energy Grids. Investing $30 billion in these three areas in 2009 would create approximately 949,000 jobs in the United States.  Of those, approximately 525,000 jobs will be in small businesses (defined as firms having fewer than 500 employees).

The graph below outlines these potential results:

 

In each of these areas, the government has an opportunity to make initial seed stimulus investments that offer superior job creation and economic growth benefits because they create what economists call a “network effect.”  This network multiplier arises from new consumer and business behaviors, functionalities, and downstream industries enabled by the IT infrastructure.  For example, traditional public works investment projects, such as building or improving highways, will not likely spur innovations in the auto industry or purchases of better tires for cars.  However, building the smart grid will spur a host of innovative new products and services from hybrid plug-in electric vehicles to smart appliances to more investment in renewable energy.

Given these opportunities, you’ll continue to hear a lot more about these topics - smart grids, healthcare and broadband - from IBM in the near future.

The need is clear. The opportunity is in front of us. The benefits are tremendous. Now, will we have the wisdom to invest in our real future? I believe so.

 

Christopher G. Caine,
Vice President, IBM Government Programs

The customer is King?

Download the audio file

Retailers are experiencing a dramatic shift in consumer spending influenced by negative trends in the economy.  Consumers have fundamentally changed the way in which they shop in recent years.  Advocates have grown in number, empowered by the ability to more deeply understand products and brands through online research and consumer community practices, and shoppers increasingly shift allegiance from vendor to vendor unlike ever before.

A recent study by IBM shows that traditional, competitive price-point, is not the key to consumer decision-making today.  Potential customers have a more varied set of desires and expectations when shopping. The manufacturers are no longer able to control and influence trends the way they have for many years, and the consumer is now truly the king. 

In this episode of Building a Smarter Planet, three experts in the field of retail take the time to share their thoughts on the current retail climate, developing trends,and some things retailers should be considering to remain competitive in this dynamic space. Doug Fleener, a retail consultant of Dynamic Experiences Group, Jim Blasingame, small business expert and host of the small business radio program, The Small Business Advocate Show, and Rob Garf, a retail strategist with IBM Global Business Services all weigh in on how they see the world of retail today.

Making our smarter systems... smarter

Click to listen

Over the past few weeks, we have been exploring how digital intelligence can help to streamline our global utility, food and traffic systems, making them more efficient and responsible. But you may be surprised to hear that global Information Technology Infrastructure is in need of an intelligence makeover as well.

It’s not a problem with the technology per se. Servers, storage, PCs, software, networking gear, the Internet — all will continue to become more powerful, affordable and available. The problem is how all this technology is currently configured into systems. The way data centers are designed and operated. The way applications are developed and deployed. The way servers and PCs are managed, upgraded and kept secure.

The fact is, the IT systems that underpin so much of how the world works must become much smarter.

In this episode of Building a Smarter Planet, we hear from four experts on the subject of IT Infrastructure - where it is today and what it is delivering, new developments in functionality, and what we need to be prepared for moving forward. Listen in as Bernie Meyerson, the CTO of IBM Systems and Technology, Donna Dillenberger of IBM Research, Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst with IDC, and James Governor, co-founder of IT analyst firm Redmonk help uncover some of the facts.

Download audio file

Guest blog, Guy Blissett: Smarter (and safer) food starts with data

It used to be that the main factors influencing a consumer’s purchasing decisions were those directly associated with the product itself.  Did the cereal have lots of juicy raisins? Was the pot pie stuffed with chicken? How well did the detergent clean my clothes?

While today’s consumer – whether they live in Guangzhou, Chicago, or Manchester – is still concerned with these attributes, they also want more information about products, much more.  Today’s consumers want to know where products came from, each and every ingredient, how they were handled and processed, were harvested sustainably and also their carbon footprint.  To top it off, they want control over where, when and how they receive this information – is it printed on the product, displayed on the store shelf, sent to their phone via text message, accessible via an in store kiosk… or is it information they obtain on-line from a blog or community.

With these same consumers increasingly pressed for time, concerned about their health and eating on the move, products have been developed to deliver convenience, nutrition and portability benefits.  The result is foods that are increasingly packaged, processed and engineered.
Adding further complexity to the equation is the fragmentation and globalization within the supply chain for many consumer products.  Commodities, ingredients and packaging are sourced through a global network of suppliers and sold via multitude of retail outlets.

While the benefits we receive from this highly evolved system are many – substantial risks and costs are also present.  Out of stocks continue to cost the industry billions in lost sales, massive amounts of food are wasted unnecessarily due to a lack of visibility, and contaminations and recalls are exacting a growing toll on consumer trust, brand equity and most importantly people’s lives.

Gathering data from this web of activity and network of players and turning it into useful information is a massive challenge… but one that on a Smart Planet must and can be met.  It is time for the informational supply chain to catch up with the physical one, for information about products to travel with them wherever they go, for consumers to have the information they need in order to feel good about the products they buy.

______________

Guy Blissett is an IBM Global Business Services consultant and the consumer products lead in IBM's Institute for Business Value. His new report, co-authored with J. Chris Harreld, "Full Value Traceability," examines Chinese consumer values and confidence related to food and product safety.

The challenge for a Smarter Planet, by Wonderwebby

Wonderwebby (aka Australian IBMer Jasmin Tragas) posted this thoughtful assessment last week:

I was just reading James Governor’s interesting post on Monkchips (Redmonk) about a Smarter Planet; an initiative IBM has been sharing recently about working together to address important global healthcare, energy, and economic problems, amongst others (full disclosure - I  work for them.) IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano said about Smarter Planet:

“We need to practice a new form of leadership. Think about these systems, no one owns the systems. Which is part of the complexity of driving the change to make them more effective. So, to make this happen, you need collaboration. Everyone has to come out of their lanes, it’s true for business and for politicians and academic organizations. People have to come together and form these partnerships of collaboration to work together to solve these problems. And yes, they are going to have to move out of their comfort zones.”

Read the rest here:

Food for Thought

Seventy-five percent of the apples sold in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas, even though the state produces far more apples than city residents consume, according to author Bill McKibben.

When food travels, it faces more risks such as spoilage and contamination, and creates a larger carbon footprint.  And that’s just part of the problem. In the U.S. alone $48 billion worth of food is thrown away and we experience 76 million cases of food borne illnesses each year.

Building a smarter system can help deliver more safe food to all.  There's much we can do if we focus on this issue. Sometimes, bringing broad awareness to a serious problem requires a little humor. 

Web 2.0 Summit 08: Bob Sutor (IBM), High Order Bit

To continue our outreach to bloggers talking and thinking about Smarter Planet, wanted to share Bob's discussion, as well as some key points from his post, below:

Bob's Silver Bullets:

• We’ve got a huge IT infrastructure in place now, and the IT and physical infrastructures are starting to converge.
• There are some critical global systemic problems that need comprehensive solutions rather than band aids.
• Moving from the in-place to instrumentation, connectivity, and processing power to something that resembles real-time intelligence is our best way of solving these problems.
• Given the urgency on which the world now needs to focus on economic problems, now is exactly the right time for placing some well-considered big bets.
• Given the new political administration coming into Washington, these big bet efforts may and probably will be accomplished through public-private partnerships.
• We need to go from “Think globally, act locally” to “Think globally, act locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.”
• What’s your role? What will need to change in the way you manage your home and your life, and how will you play a part in the global transformations that are now necessary?

A Smarter (and Healthier) Planet

As we expand our social media outreach for Smarter Planet, we will begin to feature and point to other bloggers who are thinking and investigating issues related to intelligent infrastructure. (Please feel free to recommend, via comments here, blogs and sites that we should connect with.) Here's one example from the Healthnex blog, on wearable healthcare devices and a home monitering system developed by Intel.

You can also sift through several years of Healthnex posts on topics related to smarter planet such as "e-health trends," healthcare IT innovations, clinical decision support systems and genomics.

Jack Mason
IBM Global Business Services
jkmason@us.ibm.com
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Congestion Remedies

Click to listen

By 2010, there will be 59 metropolitan areas with populations greater than 5 million – up 50% from 2001. Many of these new city dwellers will be driving cars, so if you think your day is plagued by gridlock now, buckle your seat belt. Quite simply, our cities transportation infrastructure and management approaches can’t handle the world’s traffic.

We need to stop focusing only on pieces of the problem: adding a new bridge, widening a road, putting up signs and establishing commuter lanes, or deploying traffic copters. Instead, we need to look at relationships across the entire system.

Our cities can infuse intelligence into their entire transportation system – streets, bridges, intersections, signs, signals and tolls, which can all be interconnected and made smarter. We can reduce congestion, cut pollution, shrink fuel use and decrease CO2 emissions.

Experts today look at causes such as human behavior and the effects that architecture, urban design and engineering have. Efforts such as electronic road pricing systems have been implemented in cities like London, Stockholm and Singapore, which reduces traffic and offers a wealth of digital information that can lead to important mathematical analysis of patterns toward further solutions.

In this episode of Building a Smarter Planet, we take a closer look at some of these issues and hear from three experts in the field: author Tom Vanderbilt, engineer Sam Schwartz, and IBM researcher Laura Wynter.

Download the mp3:
"Building A Smarter Planet -Traffic"

No Grid Left Behind

More utility grids are getting smarter.  This past week, the Wall Street Journal, GreentechMedia, Earth2Tech, CNET and others reported on several new smart grid initiatives:   

• French-based EDF, the leading electricity producer in Europe, is investing further in R&D around smart grid issues such as better integrating renewables like wind and solar into the grid.

• American Electric Power's gridSmart initiative will help it better distribute power and reduce electricity consumption, ultimately to all of its 5 million customers.

• Consumers Energy which has about 6.5 million customers in Michigan, will implement advanced metering technology and a smart grid field pilot network that will start being built in 2009.

IBM is a key partner in each of the above initiatives.  For more on how big blue is helping to make more energy green, click here.

Smarter Ways to See and Think

Plan "Bee" -- my personal quest to cross-pollinate smarter planet thinking inside and outside IBM -- recently led me to reconnect with Gary Zamchick, below, a colleague from my early Internet days at Time Inc. New Media.

Gary had seen my post about Smarter Planet on the Time Inc. Alumni Group on LinkedIn. A technology savvy, pioneering designer of interactive services and physical spaces (with Rockwell Group and AT&T among others) Gary intuitively appreciated the implications of smarter planet, as well as the give and take approach of Plan Bee.

One characteristic of Smarter Planet is going to be more intelligent ways for us to see or visualize information and data. Gary and I agreed that visual thinking is so central to human nature and so universal that it is bound to inform not just the next iteration of the World Wide Web, but its evolution into the "Web Wide World," i.e. the embedding of all things digital into the physical world and human lifestyles.

One of Gary's projects -- WordsEye, a semantic innovation that enables people to create 3D scenes or pictures simply by entering text descriptions -- spoke directly to this visual aspect of Smarter Planet. Imagine being able to build a 3D or virtual environment, or telling a story visually, just by describing it.

Natural language processing for graphical output is the kind of smarter planet I want to live on. If it can work with different languages it could even be the basis for a kind of visual translation service, or enable those who can't physically speak to express themselves in entirely new ways.

Gary used the service to do something along these lines in this example, turning my shorthand description of Smarter Planet into a 3D image ...that it is about the "3V" changes in data -- greater volumes, varieties and velocity of data that will often require realtime processing power.

While Gary and his co-founders are looking for investors and partners to advance WordsEye, I offered to connect him to some of the amazing IBMers pioneering 3D, virtual and data visualization innovations.

One of them is Many Eyes, which the site describes as "a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to 'democratize' visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis." (Jump right to our visualizations now, take a tour, or read on for a leisurely explanation of the
project.).

IBM and the New York Times recently started collaborating on Many Eyes via the Times' Visualization Lab.

Enter the vConference
Our buzzing around visualization and collaboration led the discussion toward what might be consider the killer business app for 3D: a seamless and elegant virtual meeting solution. In today's environment of global teams and endless teleconferences, what's missing in that work experience is the value of face to face, highly human interaction.

Webcam-based video conferencing is going to be one way to humanize the disembodied (see Tokbox, ooVoo and the new Google videochat for Gtalk), attention-deficit disorder of audio-only conference calls, but the ultimately richer (and smarter) solution is going to be even more immersive ... a one-click, highly automated solution for bringing teams together in a virtual meeting.

Not only would this offer globally dispersed knowledge workers most of the social and human benefit of F2F, and less opportunity to be distracted, but it would also enable real collaborative work to get done ala whiteboards and other tools. What's more, because the environment is not just immersive, but also digital, everything can be captured and shared.

To this end, IBM has been discussing the idea of Sametime 3D, a way to transition from IBM's  instant messaging environment (Sametime is already arguably one the most pervasive collaborative tools IBMers use) to a virtual meeting. The key will be for the experience, IMHO, to be dead on simple. Natural and intuitive controls, automated generation of avatars and sophisticated voicechat.

Are You Experienced?
Our back and forth moved on to fronts such as Gary's experience designing physical environments for generating innovation and creative interaction.

That reminded me of IBM's Innovation Discovery program, which brings together diverse teams of experts and executives from IBM and a client for  a "collaboratory", an intensive brainstorming session designed to solicit big ideas for new ways to work together. Of course, IBM also has briefing centers and industry labs around the world to facilitate the same kind of knowledge exchange that Gary and I were engaging in.

Lastly, all the talk about making physical spaces smarter and more embedded with digital sentience lead us to discuss the important, if awkwardly coined idea of "augmented reality," or AR. Basically, AR is about overlaying, projecting or embedding digital, 3D or Web-based content in the physical world, usually via GPS-based location awareness. It could be in the form of a heads-up display that makes driving directions appear to be actually on the road, rather than on the navigation screen in the dashboard.

Or it could be something like the Star Wars-flavored "holograms" of people that CNN featured in its election night coverage.

Let's Get Digiphysical
To get to this "everyware" world of ubiqutious computing and "digiphysical" convergence, one prerequisite will be a kind of universal broadband wireless. On that front, Gary and I agreed that something like the new "white spaces" spectrum recently approved by the FCC could be the beginning of a kind of pervasive "wifi on steriods" that a smarter planet is going to need. This TV channel spectrum, also know as the "vertical blanking interval," is made up of the frequencies between TV channel broadcast signals. Broadcasters had opposed the use of this spectrum because they feared interference problems.

But as the United States wrestled with how to more rapidly ramp up its broadband infrastructure, this could be one direction to create a smarter wireless revolution.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Smart Planeteer,

Jack Mason
IBM Global Business Services
jkmason@us.ibm.com
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

An Exercise in Utility

The bad news:  Because of inefficiencies throughout the utility system supply chain, the world’s grids are now incredibly wasteful.  Since there is almost no intelligence in the grids to balance loads or monitor power flows, they lose enough electricity annually to power India, Germany and Canada for an entire year.

The good news:  There are some folks working on making utilities smarter.  James Governor mentions John Soyring in his recent post, and here's a short intro to Ron Ambrosio. 

For a 2 minute overview of the problem (with a little humor) check this out:

And for more detail, tune in to this 4 min interview with Ron Ambrosio:

Obama and the Play Pump

Well, color me hopeful. In James Governor’s post,  IBM Joins Obama's Coalition for a Smart Planet: Change!, he writes:  “…IBM is choosing to work on exactly the right problems- the problems that Obama has also pledged to make his own.”

As James mentions in his comparison, one priority we’re working on is finding a solution for the lack of clean water for a fifth of the world's population. In the debate around this blog’s first post, the point is made: "the economic structures do not exist in these regions to build the necessary infrastructure making clean water delivery possible.” 

But consider the Play Pump.

A handful of folks install a merry-go-round in sub-Saharan African countries. Kids spin this around as they play -- which apparently takes very little training -- and energy from their play pumps water from the ground for their community. The pump offers space for advertising, which pays for the setup. It’s not complex. It’s not technical. It’s just smart.

A friend who sits a few cubicles away from me at work, Matt Berry, recently returned from a Corporate Service Corps trip to Tanzania, where he spent a month helping install stairmaster-type machines that pump water for the village. I’m assuming the kids weren’t aware there was an option for playground equipment.  See photo below from his trip.  Matt is the guy on the far right.  (more on his blog, registration required).

For sure, solving the problems Governor mentions like getting clean drinking water to those who need it will require the world’s top thinkers. Sharon Nunes is trying to figure out how to provide enough clean water to support the nine billion people who will inhabit our planet by the year 2050. She’s studying systems in nature, like the mechanisms the ocean uses today to cleanse itself of pollutants, and applying that knowledge to learn how we might remove heavy metals or contaminants from water systems. I won’t be able to bring much to the table on that one.

But a PhD, economic structures, elaborate infrastructures or a trip to Africa are not required for me to be able to contribute to solving one of these tough problems.  I can become part of the solution by contacting an organization like AmeriCares, UNICEF, Save the Children, etc.  Heck, we can all do something like that. 

Can't we ?

 

The Individual on a Smarter Planet

When you read Sam’s speech, it’s obvious what a smarter planet would mean for the large, complex systems that constitute the way the world works. It’s obvious that our cities, organizations, supply chains, economies and the planet’s environment – from water systems to climate systems to forests and beyond – could become manageable and sustainable in wholly new ways.

But what does a smarter planet mean for the individual? The short answer, I think, is that this is a last-shall-be-first moment. If the job of leaders is, as Sam describes it, to act more like followers – by listening, facilitating, collaboration, acknowledging that they are not in control, opening up, becoming far more transparent, etc. – then perhaps the job of "followers" (i.e., the world's poor, the new populations joining the middle class, employees, global citizens, et al.) may be to act like leaders – to be bold, to act like they own the place, to experiment, to expand their horizons.

How might individuals begin to do that? I’d suggest three ways:

1. Go Web 2.0. Embrace the long tail.
2. Look at your own area of responsibility through the lens of 'smarter planet,' and see what this frame lights up... what it transforms... what it could expand.
3. Personally engage in the big-picture societal work that is newly possible.

Sam's speeches so far have been directed to leaders. For them, the challenge is to seize this moment, to embrace the world's eagerness for change and use it to be bold, game-changing.

But as families, as neighbors, as employees, as partners, as suppliers, as scholars, as global citizens… we can seize the same opportunity, too – the chance to change our lives, our work, our communities, our future. And the way to do that is to participate, to co-create, to network, to jam. The key is to understand that these amazing new capabilities make the planet's infrastructure available to the individual, to every individual, without regard to wealth or physical location or power.

In other words, the exponential increase in connectivity -- and therefore in 'smart' connections -- means an exponential increase in new ideas, new products, new businesses, political and economic relationships and institutions and new communities. That's the deeper promise of a smarter planet – far larger and more consequential than the initial increases in efficiency it will drive.

So, for instance, any of us could choose to get involved in any of the big-picture societal/planetary possibilities Sam tees up: an Energy Internet (see Tom Friedman’s new book), monitoring natural systems, social epidemiology, microfinance, access to clean water, etc. For IBMers, things like On Demand Community and World Community Grid are directly related to the new capabilities we're describing. Any of the systems described in Sam’s speeches is going to have its primary transformation from billions of diverse, unconnected but networked individuals acting locally and collectively having an enormous impact.

So, a Linda Richman moment…

Discuss: Web 1.0 was the Information Web. Web 2.0 is the Social Web. And Web 3.0 (a.k.a. the smarter planet) is the Societal Web.

Here’s another: If a smarter planet is going to become sustainable (ecologically, politically, humanistically) – in other words, if our species is going to survive – it will be because the billions of people on the Net make it so.

The Next NetWorks: From the Internet decade to the era of intelligent systems

When we talk about the “networked” economy, many people assume that this refers to the way that the Internet has revolutionized many facets of business and life. While the Web has transformed the world, the forest we may be missing for all the online trees is the way in which all kinds of physical and organizational networks, not just digital ones, are poised for any even bigger leap in the Smarter Planet era.

A better understanding begins with a simple question: what is a network, anyway?

Three of the connotations that are most meaningful in the Smarter Planet context are:

• A complex, interconnected group or system
• An extended group of people with similar interests
• An interwoven or interrelated number of things

Consider all these examples.

Transportation systems -- including roads, railways, airlines, shipping companies – are all networks. So too are the various ways in which goods and services are manufactured, produced and sold. Think of supply chains, distribution centers and logistical services.

Financial systems of all kinds, from banks and investments firms to stock and bond markets, real estate listings and transactions and all institutions that help manage the flow of money, are all networks too.

Human organizations of every type, from neighborhoods and towns, to cities, states, and nations, from businesses and civic to public communities and learning institutions are all networks of people. Add to that things like museums, amusement parks, archives, foundations, interest groups and the like.

Our electricity and utility infrastructures are of course networks that are deeply entwined in human civilizations.

Our brains are a neural network. Space satellites. Pools of cable TV, magazine, and newspaper subscribers. Healthcare providers and patients. Legal and law enforcement systems. Credit card holders and services. Scientific collaborators. Families. Religions. Pipelines. Toll booths and ticket machines. Entire industries. Political parties. Even terrorism.

In the modern era of computers and the Internet, we’ve come to equate “network” with the information technology meaning of the term, i.e. a series of points or nodes interconnected by communications paths. Or in the case of the Web, an almost endless series of interconnected networks and subnetworks.

What’s key here is that all the preceding examples of networks –- social, commercial and informational –- existed long before digital networks came along.  Yet in only little more than a decade, we’ve almost come to see physical, interpersonal and economic networks as synonymous with their digital and online incarnations.

But the key idea about Smarter Planet is that the digital and physical will converge in profoundly literal, and deeply conceptual, ways. One might begin to think of this melding -- the digiphys, to coin a term -- as two sides of the same coin.

The Next NetWorks
As powerful as this intermingling of human and digital networks has been, something bigger is on the horizon. It is summed up, at least metaphorically, in what’s come to be known as Metcalfe’s Law of network effects….that the value of a network is proportional to the number of users of the system.

How? In short, all of the aspects of human civilization that are networks have made huge strides through the first phase of the Internet, but the next phase will see the size and  interconnectedness (and therefore the value) of these various systems skyrocket. The reason: billions of new users, as well as trillions of new network nodes, via new devices, sensors, pieces of software, and new kinds of ways to manipulate all of these things.

The result will be a shift from relatively crude networks to more complex systems that can become more intelligent, that is, more interactive, more self-aware, more information-rich and more useful to participants.

Some people don't see this transformation as more than just pat of an ongoing continuum of technology improvement. I would contend that this emerging meme or paradigm is a disruptive change, more like the arrival of the Internet itself.

And like it, the smarter planet era promises to be an evolutionary phase change like moving from ice to water, or from single-celled organisms to larger animals.

Yet despite how truly revolutionary the opening act of the Internet has been, we aren’t particularly amazed at how far the world has come. I can now do more on my Blackberry on the train to and from Manhattan -- all kinds of Web-based work, answering email and scheduling meetings, online banking, uploading photos to Facebook, updating Twitter, etc. -- than I could have ever done by most computers just a decade ago.

Conversely, people have a hard time projecting the same trajectory of change and innovation into the future.  My bet is that even just five years from now the world will be transformed by emergence of the New NetWorks that will form the foundation of a worldwide intelligent infrastructure.

Consider the century-old telephone. Today, it not only is increasingly digital and mobile, but every aspect of the system it is connected to it is increasingly intelligent and more capable. Caller ID lets you know who is phoning you, and call histories, speed dial and even voice activation mean a user rarely has to remember or dial a number. Voice mail means you never miss a message. Location awareness brings a whole new realm of possibilities in terms of services and utility. Mobile phones are even beginning to serve as transactional tools.  And wireless broadband technologies now mean that billions of users will have the entire universe of Internet innovation in their pocket.

As all of our first-generation Internet-enabled networks evolve into systems with all kinds of richer intelligence embedded in them, they can begin to serve the pressing needs of a world that Tom Friedman’s describes in his forthcoming book as Hot, Flat & Crowded.

Intelligent systems may be emerging just in time to help us deal with all of its most pressing challenges: energy and climate change, a sustainable model for economic growth, and the political stability to become a new world fueled by new innovation capabilities.

In some sense, we already have the blueprint of a complex, intelligent system: human civilization, science and the Internet model. Thus the first challenge is to marshal our collective will and energy around the possibility of creating all the various flavors of intelligent systems that we may need to grow and prosper, economically, culturally and globally.

If we succeed, we promise to redefine the key concept we started with, from network to NetWork, from an organizational construct to one that suggests a dynamic and ongoing process of value creation.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Smart Planeteer,

Jack Mason
IBM Global Business Services
jkmason@us.ibm.com
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Plan Bee and the Psychology of Smarter Planet

Plan Bee is my approach to evangelizing Smarter Planet beyond IBM, and in my new role as a social media communications expert in IBM's consulting practice, Global Business Services.

As the title suggests, Plan Bee is about cross-pollinating ideas and knowledge through a mixture of old-fashioned conversation and storytelling and a share them through a variety of Web 2.0 vectors such as this blog, its companion version on Tumblr and the #smarterplanet "stream" on Twitter.

The idea is to work like a bee: listen and learn from a variety of experts inside and outside IBM, let some of my own knowledge about smarter planet rub off on them, and carry new insights on to others. Rinse and repeat. (And see Postscript below for how you can participate.)

The plan jumpstarted itself this week when I sat down with Robert Goldberg (right), co-founder of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, to compare notes on how the smarter agenda might impact healthcare.  Bob and I had both been blogging about "ehealth" -- healthcare IT, electronic medical records, genomics, bioinformatics and personalized medicine -- for several years (he through DrugWonks and myself via Healthnex). We also happened to live in adjacent NJ suburbs.

While I hadn’t intended to apply the Plan Bee approach, our discussions naturally followed that course.  Bob showed me several examples of ways that healthcare and medicine are becoming smarter. One service, iGuard, is a kind of social network for people to share their experiences with various medications, get alerts, check interactions and securely share their meds with healthcare professionals.   

(I’d also heard about healthcare social networking or computing services such as PatientsLikeMe that enable groups of people with particular ailments to share their information with each other and their scientific data with researchers.  This idea of MySpace meets Mayo Clinic is, I think, a great model of smarter healthcare.)

Bob also showed me MediCompass Connect, from a company called iMetrikus that is focused on remote healthcare monitoring systems. As the Website explains, the MediCompass enables patients to:

“seamlessly upload biometric data from over 45 personal health monitoring devices … including glucose monitors, insulin pumps, blood pressure monitors, digital spirometers, pedometers, and weight scales” 

and then send their data via device connected to a standard phone line or networked PC.

Like a good worker Bee, I pointed Bob to services such as FitBit, which makes a small wireless device that can monitor your daily health activity such as calories burned or steps taken, as well as the quality of one’s sleep. The data flows to the Web where it can help people become more cognizant of their health and automate some of the tracking of activity level that can help all of us become smarter about our bodies and more in charge of our health.

Both of us agreed that this trend toward “patient-centric” healthcare -- where individuals are both more empowered to manage their health as well as more responsible for it, economically and otherwise – is where the world should be moving.

The Psychology of Smarter Planet
We also talked about trends and books, and Goldberg was kind enough to lend me The Watercooler Effect, by psychologist Nicholas DiFonzo on the power of rumors.

In the first chapter DiFonzo described two fundamentals of human nature or behavior that deeply inform how smarter planet is about much more than technology and data.  In addition to our social nature and need to communicate with each other, DiFonzo note that “humans have a deeply rooted motivation to make sense of the world.”

Eureka. DiFonzo had put his finger directly on the human impulse that was the real driving force behind IBM’s ambition to help the world’s infrastructure become more sentient. Smarter Planet isn’t really about cars that could drive themselves, sensors and computing embedded in everything or artificially intelligent grids that would shuttle power around like bits. It is about human mastery of the world we need to live more sustainably in.  It is about being able to understand and coexist with the physical world. It is about making sense of the complex social, economic and informational systems and networks that we are part of.

“We are sensemaking beings,” DiFonzo continued. "To make sense is to give meaning to our sensations, to put context around them so that they gain significance and fit into an understanding that coheres … To make sense is to put our experiences into perspective so that they can be understood, known about, navigated, and predicted.”

DiFonzo also tied human social and cognitive propensities together as shared sensemaking.  That, for my money, is the real story of Smarter Planet: our creative and collaborative desire to build the kind of world we want, and need.

Lastly, The Watercooler Effect mainly investigates the under-appreciated aspects of rumor, and in that spirit, I’ll end by taking on two questions about Smarter Planet that if not rumors, are two speculations or misconceptions that I’d like to address.

The first is the skeptical notion that Smarter Planet is not much more than a marketing or publicity campaign. I think the simple answer is if it is, then it will fail. I don’t think IBM would be staking so much of its reputation and its strategic focus on something it didn’t believe in, both in terms of its business objectives and corporate values.  That doesn’t mean a smarter planet is going to emerge miraculously overnight to save us from the hydra-headed challenges of energy, climate, financial malaise and healthcare costs. Nor can IBM be a solitary white knight in this endeavor. It takes a planet to build a smarter planet.

The other hesitation I’ve heard is that there’s nothing really new about the smarter planet meme. I think that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the changes in the world around us.  We are on the cusp of an order of magnitude change in the nature of realtime, massive data gathering, processing and  application to human life. The one thing smarter planet isn’t about is just “the Internet, only more.”

In fact, what’s taking shape is a three-dimensional shift in the order of magnitude of the information around us, what I call Data 3V: a sea change in the volume, variety and velocity of data processing. I’ll pick up on that topic in my next post.

Postscript:  Does this Plan Bee approach to Smarter Planet get your brain buzzing? If so I’d like to talk to you and share our stories. Please include Plan Bee in the subject of your email.

Your Smart Planeteer,

Jack Mason
IBM Global Business Services
jkmason@us.ibm.com
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Building a smarter planet

It isn’t hard to rattle off a long list of problems facing the world these days. The systems that make the world work – food, healthcare, traffic, energy, and financial systems to name a few – are in dramatic need of change. They are all in need of becoming smarter to meet the needs of a complex world.

On November 6^th, IBM’s CEO, Sam Palmisano, outlined a new agenda for addressing many of these issues – for building a smarter planet - during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

In the speech, he outlines a number of the challenges faced today by people, governments, businesses and organizations. A lack of clean water for a fifth of the world’s population. Energy systems that waste more energy than they produce. Traffic in our cities that clogs roads and chokes economic growth. 

Clearly there are no simple solutions for these problems.

Technology can play a big role in helping find answers to these problems. While the Internet currently connects more than a billion people, in just a few years, it will connect more than a trillion objects. Everything from cell phones, cars, roads, buildings, and even objects in nature itself, will have embedded technology and be connected to one another, enabling tremendous advances in how we understand how the world works and make smarter decisions to make it work better. 

But technology is just part of the solution. Without the people, policies and culture to inspire and execute the change, nothing ultimately gets done. From Sam’s speech:

Leaders will need to hone their collaboration skills, because we will need leadership that pulls across systems. We will need to bring together stakeholders and experts from across business, government and academia, and all of them will need to move outside their traditional comfort zones.

I’m struck by the questions this raises. What investments need to be made by both public and private institutions? What policy issues need to be debated and resolved? What role can individual citizens and employees play in helping bring about meaningful change?

I’m also struck by the potential opportunities inherent in finding solutions to these problems. 

The hope for this blog is to explore some of those opportunities. To surface some of the issues and challenges facing us as we collectively look to build a smarter world.

In coming days, weeks and months, we’ll be exploring new ideas and interviewing some of the world’s smartest people on these topics to address these issues that matter to the world.

In the meantime, tell us what you think. What matters to you? What do you see in the world that needs to be smarter? And what are your ideas on how to get there? Leave a comment. Let us know. We are listening.