Is Smarter Planet Real?

This morning, I launched my Smarter Work project as Innovator-in-Residence at IBM Analytics Virtual Center in support of Smarter Planet with a Manpower event for top executives from around the world. (Special thanks to Jack Mason of IBM, Chris Hardy of Avaya and Dan Darrow and Tammy Johns of Manpower for their collaborative effort!)

Some have wondered if Smarter Planet is "real," or if it's a marketing ploy geared at tapping into the zeitgeist and attracting new business without any substantive difference in the way business is being approached. It's real, and it's already changing the world.

At the core of Smarter Planet is Analytics, which allows massive data sets to be measured and results prioritized for cost-cutting, major impact and greater benefit to more people as the systems governing human life and planetary health are modified or redesigned to accommodate new analytics capabilities.

For those who are just beginning to learn about Smarter Planet, this piece in The New York Times, "Big Blue's Smarter Marketing Playbook," published today, is helpful. The program entered public consciousness a year ago when IBM CEO Sam Palmisano gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. This past Wednesday, Palmisano gave another great speech, "Welcome to the Decade of Smart," at Chatham House in London.

I've been working with IBM since 2006. My company, Dancing Ink Productions, was founded at the request of IBM as the result of the company's first InnovationJam, which included input from 37,000 employees around the world regarding how an investment of $100 million would be divided among ten areas. Virtual worlds, one of those areas, continues to be a visionary aspect of IBM's Smarter Planet.

If you or your business enterprise, think-tank, not-for-profit, university or government group is interested in learning more about the Smarter Work project, please get in touch. Ping me on Twitter or leave a comment on this post.