Metropolitan IQ and Urban metabolism: Great case studies of innovative, collaborative cities

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Last week I went to the launch of an excellent issues paper created by The Committee for Sydney, titled #wethecity: Collaborating to Compete in the Digital Era.

Lucy Turnbull, chair of Committee of Sydney, notes in her opening comments that:
Cities are collaborating to compete and the ones that collaborate most compete best.

The paper focuses on the challenges and opportunities for Sydney, with the summary recommendations at the bottom of this post.

However to understand how innovative cities can be designed, the paper notes that [Leading cities] invest in the art and practice of what we could describe as “systematic serendipity”.

It draws on 16 excellent case studies of how to develop “metropolitan IQ” and a healthy “urban metabolism” (analogies I of course love), including both international and Australian examples. These are summarized below and described in detail in the paper:
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The immense social media opportunity for real estate

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The Weekend Australian last Saturday had an interesting article titled Facebook shakes up house hunt (subscription may be required).

It described how a couple had bought their dream home after finding it on the Facebook page of a real estate agent. They arranged to inspect it immediately after it appeared on the page and bought it the next day, before the for-sale sign had been put up in the yard.

The journalist writing the article called me for some comments and included this at the end of the piece:

Social-media expert Ross Dawson said Facebook had enormous potential, but many real estate agent’s efforts were “terrible”. “They just don’t understand it. It’s a completely different mentality. They just want to sell,” Mr Dawson said.

This is true, but I think what was more interesting was the rest of what I said to the journalist, which wasn’t quoted in the article.
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Keynote slides: The Power of Social Media including 8 shock-and-awe statistics

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Tomorrow I am giving the closing keynote at Oracle Cloud Day Auckland on The Power of Social Media. Below are my keynote slides.

The usual disclaimer applies: the slides are designed to accompany my keynote, not to be viewed as stand-alone slides, but may still be of some interest to those who have not attended my presentation.

The Power of Social Media – Keynote slides from Ross Dawsn

The keynote provides a whistle-stop tour of the value of social media, beginning with statistics showing that New Zealand is a world leader in the use of social media and going on to provide a few select statistics that bring home the enormity of the impact of social media.

I then go through three major perspectives on social media: Engagement, Organizations, and Individuals, and finish off by spinning through our Social Media Strategy Framework and some perspectives on why effective Leadership is essential for value creation from social media.

Here are the statistics I provide (together with sources):

* More than 1.7 billion people are on social networks (eMarketer)

* Over 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook monthly (Facebook)

* 46% of consumers have used social media to help make purchasing decisions (Nielsen)

* 55% of under 35s share bad customer service experiences on social media (YouGov)

* Managers who use social media are 39% more likely to have been promoted recently (Millward Brown)

* 36% of 60-year old New Zealanders are on Facebook (Facebook) (compared to 43% of over 65 year old Americans on social networks (Pew))

* US$900-1300 billion annual value that could be unlocked by social technologies (McKinsey Global Institute)

* Over 85% of Facebook activity from Egypt in early 2011 was political (Dubai School of Government)

Emerging markets professionals are at the vanguard of the future of professional work

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A very interesting global survey title The Professional Revolution has just been released by Thomson Reuters (Disclosure: I long ago worked for its predecessor Thomson Financial as Global Director – Capital Markets).

The report uncovers a number of very interesting insights into professionals and professional work. One of the most interesting is the differences between emerging market and developed market professionals.

The most interesting statistics from the report, shown below, show emerging market professionals demonstrating clear leadership in creating the future of professional work.

Source of all charts is the report The Professional Revolution.

ThomsonProfessional1
Emerging market professionals are substantially more entrepreneurial than their developed market counterparts, wanting to drive change and initiatives, and preferring a competitive environment. They also recognize there is no conflict between competition and collaboration, and that collaborative work is the essence of professional growth and work satisfaction.
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The future of business education will be centered on contextual learning

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Earlier this year I gave the opening keynote at the Thought Leadership Forum on The Virtual University, which examined the future of business education.

The event organizers, the Centre for Accounting, Governance, and Sustainability and the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia, have now released a book The Virtual University: Impact on Australian Accounting and Business Education based on the conference proceedings.

The opening chapter in the book was generated from a transcript of my keynote. If you are interested you can read the full article online: Global Social and Technology Trends Shaping the Future of Universities.

One of the points I make is about the shift to highly contextual and modular learning:
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Study: Global comparisons of news consumption and shifting channels

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The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford has just published the very interesting 110 page Digital News Report 2013, which draws on an extensive survey of news consumption across nine major countries.

Below are a selection of some of the most interesting data points in the report, focusing on how people are paying for news, along with brief commentary. Source for all data is Digital News Report 2013

Reuters_news_1
There is very strong variation in the degree to which newspapers are bought by subscription or at the newsstand. This is one of the factors we looked at in our Newspaper Extinction Timeline, as it shapes how quickly people are likely to change their news consumption habits.
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The growing demand for ‘organic workplaces’: Hubs and work spaces that are good for us

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This evening I went to an event at Hub Sydney. I’m a big fan of the global Hub network of co-working environments, am an ‘Ambassador for Awesome‘ for Hub Sydney, and have visited a number of Hubs around the world including running a crowdsourcing workshop at Hub Westminster last year.

Interestingly, in every Hub I have visited I have immediately got a very positive sense about the space, something indefinably common across the Hubs, a feeling that there are good people and good things happening there.

As I left the event I had a conversation with the new Hub Sydney Space Host Emma Higgins. She was describing how from her perspective the people who work in the Hub are healthier, they look better, they have a better color, they’re fitter, you can basically see in their faces and bodies that they are simply more well than people who work in corporate environments.
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The democratization of creativity: the most important aspect is greater human expression

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When I was recently in Stockholm my friend Magnus Linkvist introduced me to Einar Bodström of House of Radon, a young and innovative production company that is exploring the possibilities of online video.

Much of the group’s work is commercial, including recent TV ads for Electrolux and Sainsbury’s, and a series of 20 minute videos on the future for Ericsson, notably including the excellent The Future of Learning, Networked Society.

However House of Radon also likes to create interesting videos for their own sake, and is perhaps best known for PressPausePlay, an 80 minute film available for free online, which explores the recent extraordinary democratization of creativity enabled by technology, and the implications. It’s embedded below, well worth taking the time to watch.

The narrative is told through a series of interviews with fascinating creators, including Moby, Seth Godin, Robyn, and many others.
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Carving out the middle: how we must respond to the dangers of the polarization of work

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One of the consistent themes in my Future of Work framework is the polarization of work and value.

In a number of the keynotes and workshops I’ve run recently, including at the Richmond Financial Services Forum in Interlaken, the Institute of Chartered Accountants conference in Melbourne, and for the executive teams of various corporate clients, I’ve pointed to research from noted labor economist David Autor that brings into focus what is happening.

Autor_laborpolarization
Source: The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market, David Autor
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The rise of crowdsourcing in Malaysia

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I was recently in Kuala Lumpur to do twin keynotes at the National Crowdsourcing Conference organized by Digital Malaysia, and meet with government officials to discuss how Malaysia can best tap the potential of crowdsourcing.

The Star of Malaysia, the largest English-language newspaper in the country, interviewed me while I was there for a feature section on crowdsourcing. Here are excerpts from some of the articles:

The main article Captivate the crowd looks at the big picture of crowdsourcing and its potential:
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