Every city or region of any size in the world would like to attract technology companies to locate there. The boom times for digitally-driven technologies seem to know no end, and diversifying into tech looks like a sound long-term strategy. But executing the strategy? Not so easy.

One of the world’s better examples comes from the city of Tallinn, capital of Estonia, a country whose journey from post-Soviet devastation to tech leadership and EU membership still astounds. A program called Test in Tallinn, led by innovation expert Mark-Emile Talivere, does what so many communities try to do, and does it very well.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Jim Shea, Founder and CEO of Deepsig.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Dr. Norman Jacknis, Senior Fellow for The Intelligent Community Forum.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Dr. Norman Jacknis, Senior Fellow for The Intelligent Community Forum.

The Industrial Development Bureau, Ministry of Economic Affairs directs the project, “Smart City Taiwan,” as part of Taiwanese government’s goal to promote industrial upgrading and transformation and digital technologies. The central and local governments and industries work together to introduce smart, innovative applications covering “health,” “governance/safety,” “traffic,” “agriculture,” “education,” and “tourism/retail” to 22 cities and counties across Taiwan. So far, the project has yield remarkable results. About 300 companies have released more than 220 smart services accessible to 8.54 million people. These smart services are designed to address local issues and are also being exported to foreign countries. 

Population aging increases the prevalence of dementia among Taiwan’s elderly who are at a high risk of getting lost or going missing. This invention helps solve this problem.

I’ve written before about the ways that small towns and rural areas can take advantage of broadband Internet connections to gain access to global economic opportunities, educational and cultural resources, even the virtual equivalents of coffee shops that used to be only available in big cities.

Perhaps the biggest remaining barrier to a 21st century rural renaissance is access to world class health care.

PART 2: With smart infrastructure, smart people and smart money, an innovation ecosystem is never too far behind.

As we see the emergence of the Internet of Things in the short years ahead we will become even more used to changes in how we will expect things to work and how differently we will want to do things. Resistance to change has been the usual excuse for communities and people, in general, in the past to accept new ways of doing things, but as our urban areas increase their populations and it becomes more difficult to be mobile; to be able to do the things that we may have done previously and we will now have to share it with more people waiting to have access to it, there will be less resistance to change. Perhaps even pent-up demand will be experienced for things that people see in other communities and expect will or should be available to them in short order.

PART 1: Disruption - to transformation - to evolution: the circle of life continues.

As I move through my day, I am constantly disrupted in my normal ways of doing things to the point where I am no longer disrupted but maybe only annoyed that what I am now doing on a regular basis is the new normal. Then I become resigned to this fact and don’t expect to ever go back to what I had been doing years before. I begin to see the advantages of what I am doing today and would never wish to go back to what I had been doing. I even advocate the fact that this new thing is so much better and encourage others to do the same. As society accepts these acts by me and others, they become normalized and the disruption is no longer ever thought of as a disruption. Besides a new disruption has already taken its place.

Kip Tom, a seventh-generation family farmer, harvests the staples of modern agriculture: seed corn, feed corn, soybeans and data.

“I’m hooked on a drug of information and productivity,” he said, sitting in an office filled with computer screens and a whiteboard covered with schematics and plans for his farm’s computer network.