Smart ecosystem programs

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE envisions a smart city as one that brings together technology, government and society to enable the following characteristics: a smart economy, smart mobility, a smart environment, smart people, smart living, smart governance. But what does a smart city really do?

As a starting point, we define a smart city is one that uses technology extensively to achieve key outcomes for its various stakeholders, including residents, businesses, municipal organizations and visitors.

Figure Two shows our framework for a smart city ecosystem. A vibrant and sustainable city is an ecosystem comprised of people, organizations and businesses, policies, laws and processes integrated together to create the desired outcomes shown in Figure One. This city is adaptive, responsive and always relevant to all those who live, work in and visit the city. A smart city integrates technology to accelerate, facilitate, and transform this ecosystem. Figure Two. The smart city ecosystem framework.

There are four types of value creators in the smart city ecosystem. They create and consume value around one of the outcomes listed in Figure One. While technology is a critical enabler, it is just one of many foundational capabilities that every smart city must have.

No one capability is more important than the rest. Each capabilities plays a different role in the smart city. These capabilities must integrate and coordinate with each other to carry out its mission. This is the most visible layer for city residents, businesses, visitors, workers, students, tourists and others. To stay relevant, value creators in the smart city must continuously innovate and update its services for its stakeholders. Smart cities proactively facilitate this through a variety of innovation programs, including labs, innovation zones, training, ideation workshops, skills development and partnerships with universities and businesses.

The smart city creates disruption and results in digital transformation of existing processes and services. Smart city management models must integrate a new ecosystem of value creators and innovators. Sometimes this is an expedient way to get something up and running. What many business executives end up asking themselves in the end is whether they really got what they needed from the practice. Off-the-shelf products come with many inherent issues.

For companies looking to develop a specific product with specific functions and unique outcomes, executives will often come to realize the limitations of off-the shelf products. For example, by taking something off-the-shelf such as a Smart Room, you may have to get 10 or 20 different solutions to work together in your ecosystem.

These devices must be integrated and work with a variety of other systems. In order to create a uniform experience that reflects best on your brand, you really need to be in control. Even for a single product, off-the-shelf can have limitations regarding what features are present or will create links to your software or broader ecosystem.

Keep in mind, the depth of the value for the end customer is tied out through software features and cultivating the data. The off-the-shelf solution might only hit one point quickly and seriously lack much of the follow-through value-add over time. Another piece of the puzzle to consider is how your smart device fits into the larger existing ecosystems; iOS, Android, search, online stores, and content like music or videos can all play a major factor in adoption and total end-user experience.

Many products are typically designed to do X when what it needs to accomplish is really X and Y. The company providing the off-the-shelf product does not really want to get into the business of customizing it for every B2B customer. Additionally, such a task is not always easy to do and the company likely does not have the specific market expertise that your business has in place. Thus, they will not be helpful in the effort. Certainly, when you are in control and you design and create your own product, you get what you want.

Exactly what you want. These are large and very real risks to consider. When you create your own product, you also create your own clear process to follow. Businesses cannot make the mistake of approaching product development as if it were manufacturing. They are not the same. Partnerships that encourage and support cross-functional collaboration, on the other hand, work better when the up-front commitment, and therefore the barriers to entry, are lower.

Just as an end-to-end IoT implementation is often a system of systems, so the IoT ecosystem is really an ecosystem of ecosystems, embracing several different types of partnerships:.

Leading IoT vendors understand that the traditional strategy of procuring isolated, extensible systems is no longer the right approach to building connected solutions. Instead, vendors work together within the IoT ecosystem to build horizontal solutions that stitch together multiple vertical systems. Companies wishing to promote collaboration among ecosystem vendors can offer developer partner programs that support software development ecosystems. Such programs give software developers the ability to access development tools, such as APIs, and to collaborate with other ecosystem partners to create new applications and build integrated systems.

Successful developer partner programs function as a confederation of loose contacts—more like a group of friends than a formal alliance or official business partnership. Because partners in the ecosystem have to make a relatively low investment to play, the relationship favors knowledge-sharing and experimentation.

Well-designed software development ecosystems benefit both the businesses and organizations that participate in the ecosystem and the customers of the participants. Development partners can deliver value-added solutions on top of, or in conjunction with, an IoT platform, thus complementing the solutions they are able to offer.

Customers can acquire and deploy these solutions to extend the capabilities of their smart systems, while avoiding vendor lock-in. Solutions developed by ecosystem partners who work together often guarantee interoperability via validation or certification efforts, lowering the risk associated with adopting new offers that combine data or functionality from multiple domains.

And because these solutions are jointly designed and developed, they can address needs that overlap domains that have historically been separate—lighting and IT, for example, or human resources and marketing. Meaningful benefits for participants in a software development ecosystem include:.