Urban World: A new iPad app for exploring an unprecedented wave of urbanization
The growth of cities in emerging markets is driving the most significant economic transformation in history. MGI’s new iPad app, Urban World, available for free from the iTunes App Store, offers an intuitive sense of how economic power will move as this urban expansion takes place. A McKinsey Global Institute article.
NYC Taxi App trial (and error)
Hailing yellow cabs with their smartphones is an obvious application most New Yorkers were looking forward to. The success of it, however, seems not to depend on user adoption or taxi company participation.
A recent wall street journal article stated that the “black car” substitute, a more luxury and limo-like service, is blocking the way to more efficient use of taxis. A coalition of black car companies is trying to appeal a judge’s decision for the application’s go ahead. The main argument is that city regulators overstepped their authority in accommodating smartphone users.
Legal challenges are often underestimated in developing innovative business models. In the hands of conservative and less innovative competitors, they are free ammunition to sink the progressive ships. For the “black cars”, the trial certainly buys time. And time will tell if they make the error of confusing the potential appeal for a long term competitive advantage.
by Mathias Cobben (@mathcob)
image credit: www.yellowexpresscab.net
TNW Trend #1: The rise of Context - 5 things to watch
At The Next Web Conference, Robert Scoble, Technology evangelist and Rackspace’s startup liaison officer, stressed the importance that context will play in the future of product and service development. The underlying idea is that people and objects will be capturing and transmitting data more than ever before, and on a continuous basis.
Scoble puts forward five things that are at the basis of the new contextuality:
1. Wearable Computing: The obvious smartphone in every one’s pocket is are already capturing and transmitting an unseen amount of data to third parties of different kinds. Imagine what The Google glass, Memoto, and others will add, especially when considering the ever growing interconnectivity using API’s.
2. Big Data And Data Computation: Not a new concept, but a very hot and debated topic at The Next Web. Most speakers (such as The Economist’s Kenneth Cukier) point out that it may be hyped right now, but it is definitely there to stay, just like the internet didn’t disappear after the first dot com bubble. The growing interest in computation may well be to big data what internet 2.0 was to the pre-millennial internet. More on this in a following post.
3. Sensor Data: Sensors, whether they are in the devices you wear or in your surroundings, are capturing more than we may expect. Cities are equipped with ever more sensors, such as camera’s, traffic and temperature sensors.
4. Social Network Data: It is not just the sensors and the apps that are secretely spying on us. We are addicted to sharing information and data, about ourselves, and our surroundings.
5. Location Data: We are only seeing the beginning of this. A recent study pointed out that location data allows for unique identification of persons, much like finger prints and DNA.
So, the burning question is: What on earth does it mean for Urban Business Modeling?
1. Critical Mass: Cities will be the first place where all of this is happening, as they will be the first to reach the required critical masses of customers and their data for products and services to break through.
2. Data as a Key Resource: As mentioned before in earlier posts: Data are a potential key resource for many business models tackling urban challenges. Taxi’s in Singapore already found out.
3. Customer Relationships and Channels: Finally, a third and more general point, is that user insights are taken to a whole new level here. Relationships with customers can be tailored in much greater detail than ever before, as well as the channels to reach them. As organizations are able to sense users much better, their responses will be much more swift and accurate. Simultaneously, this takes iterative learning to a cycle speed we may not have seen before. At this moment we already see that companies who “listen” to the social space carefully anticipiate much faster to customer aspirations compared to organizations who don’t. And apparently, it is just the beginning.
by Mathias Cobben (@mathcob)
image credit: The Next Web
NYC tries to attract Big Data pro’s for tackling urban opportunities
The New York Times reports that, cities, as generators of big data, now try to attract the professionals that can turn big data into big opportunities.
The City of New York will invest $15m into Columbia’s new Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering, which houses a center that has smart cities as a focal point. The great news is that this is a formal acknowledgement of the urban big data potential. Furthermore, the Institute’s mission cleary states the following: ” (…) important in this mission is supporting and encouraging entrepreneurial ventures emerging from the research IDSE conducts.”
by Mathias Cobben (@mathcob)
image credit: http://idse.columbia.edu/smart-cities
