All posts tagged: Digital revolution

Silicon Valley Innovation Tours Done Right

This article was first published as a LinkedIn article by Antonio Grgic on November 12, 2018. He condensed his personal learnings from a study tour to Silicon Valley organized by HWZ University of Applied Sciences Zurich. What follows is the English translation of the article with an introduction by Gert Christen who organized and led the study tour. Silicon Valley Tours – Just Tourism or Meaningful for Innovation? If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area you know the two types of buses shuttling people between San Francisco and Silicon Valley: Employee buses of the large tech companies on the one hand and chartered buses carrying visitors from all over the world to the same tech companies on the other. Each week there are hundreds of delegations from all over the world traveling around the Silicon Valley determined to learn its secrets. They fall into five categories: Politicians who want to learn how to set policies that attract innovative companies, resulting in more high qualified jobs and highly profitable and future-proof companies. Business people who want to learn how to be more innovative and who want to sell their products, find new suppliers or create …

“Cracking the Code of Public Sector Innovation” included in Yea(h)rbook

The Institute of Digital Business at HWZ University in Zurich, Switzerland, included my article about how to create a method to innovate in the public sector in their yearbook 2018. Very happy and proud to make a contribution and to see my learnings being shared and used! The full article can be read here. The yearbook can be ordered here. My thanks to the team who worked with me on this project at City Innovate Foundation, namely Garrett Brinker, Katy Podbielski, Luke Kim, and Carlos Cruz-Casas of Miami-Dade County as well as all the experts, researchers, writers, advisors and supporters. It was a pleasure and together we created something unique!  

Update on the State of the Digital Revolution – Resistance (still) Futile and Unnecessary

Two years ago I wanted to raise awareness for the digital revolution and its influence on our lives. So I invited digital startups as “Digital Lifestyle Showcases” to Startupfair. What has happened since? Did new digital technologies change our lives for the better? Or are there reasons to be scared of the oncoming digital tsunami? Time to assess for an update: Digital technologies indeed started solving some previously unsolvable problems. Digital technologies have matured from standalone concepts to integral parts of real world applications. Some of the Startupfair showcases already transformed their field, many have grown into respectable businesses. What I didn’t see coming: Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain as new two powerful enabling technologies.   “Today’s confluence of new digital technologies, new devices and people’s lifestyle preferences is a revolution and offers vast opportunities for innovation, new businesses, and a better life”, is how I started my post two years ago. And fundamentally nothing has changed: Moore’s law continues to advance miniaturization, which in turns allows for ever smaller devices with ever larger capabilities! And with this, new digital technologies are being adopted by more and more users for many different applications. …

Invitation to BRIDGE SF Summit, San Francisco, September 6-9th, 2016

BRIDGE SF brings public, private, non-profit, and academic institutions together to  drive innovation for a better tomorrow in cities. Organized in conjunction with the San Francisco Mayor’s Office and the University of California, Berkeley, City Innovate  invites policymakers and leading innovators for a four-day event focused on citizen-critical issues. Topics among others are: Mobility in Cities (City of San Francisco, City Innovate and MIT Media Lab) City Planning Best Practices (University of California Berkeley and UI Labs Chicago) City Infrastructure of the Future: (ID3 and CivicMakers) Urban Sensors (City of Los Angeles and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) Global City Knowledge Transfer (U.S. Department of Commerce and National Resource Defense Council) The Digital Age of Manufacturing (City Innovate) Clean Energy (City of San Francisco and Intelligent City Forum) The full program of the event can be found here. An event brochure can be downloaded. Registration for the Bridge SF Summit here. Looking forward to meeting you at the Bridge SF Summit 2016!

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Digital Lifestyle is Inevitable – Resistance Futile and Unnecessary

Today’s confluence of new digital technologies, new devices and people’s lifestyle preferences is a revolution and offers vast opportunities for innovation, new businesses, and a better life. The digital revolution concerns all industries. Embracing the revolution has many benefits. Trying to resist is very risky. Startup companies are at the forefront of this digital revolution and are commercializing innovations in many areas. Startupfair 2015 makes the digital revolution visible by showing “Digital Lifestyle Showcases”; Swiss startups demonstrate their solutions for the digital age. All industries are touched by the arrival of new digital technologies, and some will be transformed forever: Farmers increase crop yield by using drones with sensors and cameras to compute fertilization patterns. Large supply chains may be replaced by on demand and on site production: A 3D printer recently printed 10 single family houses in just one day*. And service businesses continue to be disrupted by internet businesses and the sharing economy, as can be witnessed by the very public conflict between traditional taxi and delivery service operators and the Silicon Valley company UBER. Resistance has been the choice of some …