smart buildings in the age of covid-19

How COVID-19 clarified the necessity and value of smart buildings

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in COVID-19, Digital Transformation, Economic Impact, Internet of Things, IoT, Safe Spaces, Smart Buildings, Smart City, Smart Communities, Strategy

Smart buildings transform the spaces in which we work, live, shop, and relax. They implement innovations that change what we do, how we do it, and where we do it. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted how we used indoor spaces, and despite our progress in combatting the disease, scientists believe it will persist. What then becomes the role of smart buildings?
This blog updates the definition of today’s smart buildings and describes its evolved roles.

smart buildings in a smart city

Smart Buildings – What’s In It for Cities? (Part Two)

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in Digital Transformation, Industrial IoT, Internet of Things, Smart Buildings, Smart City, Smart Communities, Strategy

Smart buildings bring new and significant value to tenants, building owners and operators. These benefits range from increased tenant productivity and safety, lower operating costs, and higher satisfaction. But what value do smart buildings bring to cities?

This article, the second of two parts, describes a framework used to identify areas of value creation by smart buildings for the benefit of cities. A sample set of benefits, and a format for presenting these in a consumable format well suited for city leaders, is presented.

smart buildings - credit to Beau Swierstra

Smart Buildings – What’s In It for Cities? (Part One)

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in Digital Transformation, Industrial IoT, Internet of Things, Smart Buildings, Smart City, Smart Communities, Strategy

Smart buildings bring new and significant value to tenants, building owners and operators. These benefits range from increased tenant productivity and safety, lower operating costs, and higher satisfaction. But what value do smart buildings bring to cities?

In order to understand how cities (and smart cities) benefit from smart buildings, Part One (of two) of this article provides a background understanding of the things that cities care about (outcomes), and how these outcomes are viewed the four civic priorities and perspectives.

Building the Smart Region: an opportunity for electric utility companies

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in Business Models, Digital Transformation, Innovation Management, Internet of Things, Smart City, Smart Communities, Strategy

While smart cities represent a major business opportunity for utility companies, they are better suited to co-lead the building of the “smart region”. Utility companies have the regional focus, infrastructure, resources, operational and execution capabilities to support the largest metropolitan areas to the smaller cities and regions.

This article discusses some entry level smart region opportunities for utility companies, as well as some of the key gaps they must address.

Smart City Ecosystem Architects - eight things to do

Building Smart Cities – Eight Things That Matter

Posted on 1 CommentPosted in Best Practices, Digital Transformation, Industrial IoT, Innovation Management, Internet of Things, Smart City, Smart Communities

Whether you are planning or have already started your smart city journey, there are eight things that cities must get right. While smart cities are often associated with technology, it is but one component within the larger smart city ecosystem that needs to be addressed.

This article discusses the eight things that leaders and planners must get right, in order to build the sustainable and well functioning smart city.

Smart City Ecosystem Framework

Planning Sustainable Smart Cities with the Smart City Ecosystem Framework

Posted on 6 CommentsPosted in Digital Transformation, Internet of Things, Smart City, Smart Communities, Strategy

The smart city is a complex ecosystem of people, processes, policies, technology and other enablers working together to deliver a set of outcomes.

Despite this, many planners today are not taking an ecosystem approach to smart city projects. This article introduces the smart city ecosystem framework, a more holistic and multi-dimensional approach, to building more sustainable, scalable and relevant smart cities.

Six things IT managers must do to accelerate IoT adoption

6 things IT executives must do to accelerate IoT adoption

Posted on 1 CommentPosted in Best Practices, Digital Transformation, Innovation Management, Internet of Things

Are you ready for IoT? Despite its transformational potential, most organizations are not ready. In an era of rapid disruption and digital transformation, IT executives and managers must lead the charge. They must bridge the gap between technology, business, engineering and operations. They are evangelists, teachers, facilitators and innovators.

This article lists six things IT managers must do to successfully accelerate IoT adoption within their organizations.

Smart parking - the real innovation is not in the parking

Smart parking is innovative, but what it enables is even more innovative

Posted on 2 CommentsPosted in Digital Transformation, Innovation Management, Internet of Things, Smart City

The real innovation of smart parking solutions is not in the technology. While smart parking solutions bring immediate value to drivers, parking enforcement agencies and cities, the real innovations and value will emerge once it is deployed and new beneficiaries emerge.

Smart parking is not all about parking. This article describes who the new beneficiaries are, shares examples of where new value is being created, and lists best practices to uncover real innovations.

Digital Transformation

The evolving role of IT managers in a hyper-converged digital world

Posted on 3 CommentsPosted in Business Models, Digital Transformation, Innovation Management, Internet of Things

In the digital enterprise, the strategic fusion of IT, operations technology [OT], audio-video [AV] with transformational technologies (Cloud, Internet of Things, AI, analytics, edge processing) leads to richer customer experiences, business acceleration, and operational agility. This fusion leads to new innovation and digital transformation of the organization.

This article highlights the new roles and expectations of IT in an age of digital transformation.

IoT innovation is not in the solution, but in how it is used

IoT innovation is not in the technology, but in what it can do

Posted on 4 CommentsPosted in Best Practices, Digital Transformation, Innovation Management, Internet of Things, Strategy

Don’t confuse IoT with innovation. The real IoT innovation is not in the technology, but in what it can do and what it allows organizations to become – intelligent, agile and adaptive, in creating new value for its customers.

This article describes five innovation paths with IoT solutions to consider when planning digital transformation projects, along with advice to get started on turning the Internet of Things into the Innovation of Things.

Ten best practices for making your first IoT projects a success

Posted on 1 CommentPosted in Best Practices, Digital Transformation, Execution, Innovation Management, Internet of Things, project management, Strategy

A recent study by Cisco found that three quarters of IoT projects were not successful. The reasons included long completion times, poor data quality, lack of internal expertise, integration and budget overruns.

In this blog, we will share ten best practices, from project planning to implementation, to help managers and project planners overcome common mistakes made with projects implementing emerging technology solutions.

Five things managers should do first in an emerging IoT market

Posted on 3 CommentsPosted in Digital Transformation, Internet of Things, IoT, Strategy

There is no lack of IoT platforms, business models, and innovative products in the market today. However, today’s products are still immature point solutions. From technology standards, to business models, IoT will evolve over the next few years.

Given the immature state of IoT, what should transformation, business and IT managers do today?

This article discusses five things that managers should do now as they plan and deploy IoT strategies and projects.