A Smarter Planet Blog

Part 3 – Social Media and the City – Key characteristics

2012-02-03T11:27:59Z

What makes a smarter social media city? At its best, it is:

Engaging
It promotes citizen involvement and builds a new sense of
ownership with scope for collaboration in every aspect of city life.

Transparent
It lifts the bonnet on how the city works – processes are visible,
dialogue is open, feedback is swift.

Nimble
It delivers services in real time with an enhanced ability to adjust
to citizens’ fast-changing needs.

Secure
It respects privacy, protects data and leverages technology to
enhance the physical security of citizens.

Download the Social media and the city new paper

Watch Social Media Enabled Cities webinar

Technorati Tags: IBM, Smarter Cities, Smarter Planet, social business

IBM SmartCamp Finals: And the Winner Is…

2012-02-03T20:30:42Z

Sometimes, when Volodymyr Pigrukh, CEO of Profitero, wants to grab the attention of a retailer he sees as a potential customer, he shows them just how well his pricing analysis software works with a shocking demonstration. He runs an analysis of the retailer’s prices compared to the most aggressive of its competitors, grabs a screen shot of the comparison and sends it to the company’s executives via e-mail. Those retailers whose prices stack up poorly against the competition understand viscerally the value that Profitero’s software can bring them. “I hope nobody got fired in the process,” he says.

Profitero has only 13 employees–divided between Ireland and Belarus–but that didn’t stop the one-year-old startup from winning the IBM Entrepreneur of the Year award last night in San Francisco. The company bested eight other young outfits from around the world who competed in the finals of the annual IBM SmartCamp competition–a program targeting companies whose products and services align with the Smarter Planet strategy. The finalists were the winners of nine regional contests held in Barcelona, New York, Austin, Shanghai, Bangalore, London, Tel Aviv, Rio de Janeiro and Istanbul.

Almost all of the finalists offer analytics software or services–demonstrating that there’s a role for startups in the huge and fast growing global analytics software market.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Profitero got its start after Kanstantsin Chernysh, later one one of the co-founders, ran into difficulty running a handful of e-commerce Web sites he owned in Belarus. Because his sites addressed global markets, he was essentially competing with every other online retailer in the world who carried the same products, so he had to be price competitive with them. But, how could he find out efficiently what so many others were charging? To solve this problem, Chernysh wrote a software program that roamed the Web in search of comparative pricing information and presented the results in an easy to interpret interface. Because Chernysh owned several Web sites, he designed the software from the get-go to manage a lot of data from a lot of sites.

Meanwhile, Pirgukh and Dmitry Vysotski, the other co-founder, were working for multinational high-tech firms in Ireland. Chernysh knew Vysotski from childhood. and approached him about turning the prototype into a product. A short time later, the three decided to launch a company.

Early on, they planned on targeting small retailers. They figured that the giants wouldn’t want to deal with a startup. But they quickly found that large retailers had large problems with online pricing–and they were happy to get help from anybody who could provide it. Profitero has landed impressive clients including Tesco, the UK retailing giant, and Auchan, a large supermarket chain in France. They also have a partnership with A.C. Nielsen, the global information measurement company.

Profitero sells a cloud-based service for retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers that gathers pricing from more than 2,800 online retailers. Customers use insights from the the service for pricing strategy, forecasting, ongoing price management, merchandising planning and product promotions. One of Profitero’s advantages is their use of natural language processing to track not just brand name merchandize but private label items as well.

Ultimately, Profitero’s leaders plan on developing a consumer service that helps people shop for their best prices on the Web.

It’s a company whose data makes retailers uncomfortable, but is too valuable to ignore.

Live Blogging from IBM SmartCamp Global Finals–San Francisco

2012-02-03T02:47:33Z

Today marks the culmination of the IBM SmartCamp global entrepreneur competition. Nine startups from around the globe have spent the past three days in San Francisco learning from venture capital and business leaders, honing their VC pitches, getting feedback from mentors and networking with one another. Today, at the Bently Reserve, they made their final pitches and listened to speeches by government and business leaders.

The winner is….

Profitero, from Ireland (by way of Ukraine and Belarus), is the winner of the IBM Global Enterpreneur of the Year award.

Congratulations Profitero!

The People’s Vote Award Winner is….

IDXP, from Brazil, won the popular vote with 845 votes of a total of 2537 votes cast. Profitero came in second, and C-B4 came in third.

Congrats IDXP!

The Start: 1:30 p.m.

Gavin Newsom
Lt Governor of California
Entrepreneurship and Economic Development

The city is a city of dreamers and doers and entrepreneurs.

We have a formula of success. There’s intention if you want to create an entrepreneurship economy.

We have so much diversity here. That’s what we’re all about. We’re about inviting the best and brightest, where you can take risks and change the order of things.

San Francisco is becoming Silicon Valley north. The big problem is a shortage of people with the right skills. Education will be the differentiator.

The state is beginning to turn around.

We need to do more and better to make our academic innovations available to business.

In 2005, we hosted World Environment Day in SF. It also marked the first time that more people were living in urban areas. We know where the trend lines are going. The opportunity is self evident. The challenge is obvious. How can we create a sustainable framework for people in urban areas?

We have to bring the top talent to bear on these challenges and opportunities.

——–

1:45 p.m.

Panel: The New Intelligence: The Power of Insight
Evangelos Simoudis, Trident Capital
Promod Haque, Norwest Venture Partners
Alexandra Johnson, DFJ VTB Aurora
Moderator: Mike Riegel, IBM

Riegel: Talk to us about the growth of global entrepreneurship.

Johnson: We started on working on this a decade ago, and now we’re seeing things happen, especially in places like Russia and China.

Also the growth of mobile computing in emerging markets made it possible for those markets to leapfrog the mature markets.

Haque: We’ve been investing in emerging markets since 2005. The emergence of the middle class in those countries is creating opportunities. We have a single global fund. All our partners are sync-ed together. We have teams on the ground in all these countries, and we’re working together.

Simoudis: We’re seeing a lot of knowledge coming from outside the us and affecting the way we think about investing.

Riegel: Is analytics a big opportunity around the world.

Pramod: In the US, we’re in the third generation. In emerging markets they still installing things like ERP systems. So the work on big data is happening here. It’s the volume of data and the variety of data, and we have real time data. It’s not about reducing costs but about making my company grow.

Simoudis: People are moving from spotting patterns in data to actual insights. We’re focusing on companies that are industry specific. The software can saw to the user because of these patterns you should change the marketing budget in the following way.

Johnson: We see all sizes of companies change their behavior based on analytics. Big banks have embraced business analytics tools, and smaller banks are trying to get into the game in the same way. If they can predict the behavior of their customers and go to the places where their customers are, then they can expand their businesses.

Pramod: We have machine learning now. You can inject real time data. You have the location based information. You can make precise recommendations to users in real time.

Riegel: What’s your best advice to the entrepreneurs here?

Simoudis: I’ve been an entrepreneur twice. First, you need passion and optimist. Also, remember, your investors are your friends. Treat you money like it’s theirs.

Haque: My advice is don’t give up–no matter what happens. Figure out a way. If you’re passionate about what you’re doing, you’ll stick to it. There are a lot of new disruptive technologies coming, and those are opportunities for you.

Johnson: Choose your investor carefully. It’s a long term relationship. Find a way to build a company where 2 + 2 = 9.

——

2:30 p.m.

Manoj Saxena
General manager
IBM Watson Solutions

My lessons from being an entrepreneur

I worked for 3M for several years and then moved to Austin, and launched my first startup. I used 13 credit cards. In early 2001 the company was bought by Commerce One. Then I started another company, which was bought by IBM

The companies created about $250 million of value and nobody got hurt in the process.

The lessons:

As an entrepreneur you have to understand your personal core competence. My skill is transferring something from a Powerpoint into a business. IBM is making it possible for me to do that again.

Entrepreneurship is changing. There’s a lot more realism about how businesses are built. It’s no longer Build it and They Will Come. Now it’s, If they Come, You Can Build It. You need to validate the market before invest a lot. It’s about building a business, not building a startup. Back in the dot-com era, entrepreneurs just wanted to build quickly and flip it. They didn’t build a business model. Today, people are building real businesses.

Also, you have to build a business with a bigger purpose. It has to be about more than you bank balance.

The other lesson is great companies are build by exceptional people. Don’t start a company with your beer buddies. It’s the team that gets you through.

How Watson helps create a smarter Planet.

It’s been nearly a year since Watson won on Jeopardy! This was one of IBM’s Grand Challenges—to prove what computing can do.

Last August, IBM formed a new business unit to commercialize Watson. It’s a Deep Q&A system. It can process and understand a tremendous amount of information in a short time. I can deal with unstructured data. We can create information based applications rather than data based applications. Before Watson, computers were big calculators; After Watson, they’re learning and thinking machines. It’s the third generation of IT.

Watson helps to create a smarter planet. The world is getting more instruments, interconnected and intelligent, which creates a lot of new opportunities.

Watson represents one of the most advanced capabilities in computing—and a great opportunity to apply intelligence to solving the world’s problems.

How does it work? Three steps:

–It understands human language at massive scale.
–It generates possible answers and gives its confidence level, and can explain why it came up with the answer.
–It learns from its experiences.

The first question was: where do we apply Watson?

Our first target is health care. There’s a tremendous amount of medical information, yet doctors can’t absorb it all and apply the information at the point of care.

This is the grand challenge for Watson to take on.

It’s so difficult because there’s so much unstructured data. Most computers are not designed to understand unstructured information. Watson understands human language and understands the question that is being asked, so it can find answers.

It can serve as an advisor to doctors. It’s not making decisions. It’s the physician’s assistant.

—————-

6:15 p.m.

Guy Kawasaki
Garage Technology Ventures
The Lessons I learned From Steve Jobs

I worked for Apple from 1983 to 1987 as a software evangelist for the software division. I worked for Steve Jobs. I had a great time there. We were trying to change the world

I’m sure right now Steve’s telling god how to run the universe.

–“Experts” are often clueless. As entrepreneurs, if you listen too much to the experts, you’ll go wrong. The most dangerous experts are people who are successful and rich. Rich and famous doesn’t mean smart. Most of the time it means lucky.
–Customers can’t tell you what they need. Nobody told Apple to build the Macintosh. Customers told us to build a better Apple II.
–Jump to the next curve. Don’t just duke it out on the same curve.
–The biggest challenges beget the best work. Apple took on IBM. Find a mighty competitor for yourself.
–Design counts. It’s not all about price. Enough people care about design.
–Use big graphics and big fonts. Example from Jobs: iTunes: The best windows app ever written. The optimal number of Powerpont slides in a presentation is 10. You should give it in 20 minutes max. The minimum font size should be 30 points.
–Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence. When things change you have to react and change.
–A-players hire A-Players. I’d say you should hire people who are even better than you. A+ players.
–Real CEOs can demo. They can show how the product works. They don’t hand it over to the vp of engineering.
–Real entrepreneurs ship. They don’t wait for the perfect product. I say: Don’t worry, be junky.
–Marketing = unique value.
–Some things need to be believed to be seen. In order to see a Macintosh, developers had to believe in it first.

(His slides had very large fonts, but his talk lasted 30 minutes and he had way more than 10 slides. His retort: “These rules are for you, not for me.”)

Super Bowl Analysis Takes Us Beyond the Tweets

2012-02-03T17:04:44Z

John Squire is IBM’s director of Digital Marketing and Analytics.

Updated Post
AN UPSET IN THE MAKING
3 February 2012, 11:30 AM Eastern

Just like on the field, Eli Manning is riding a late surge to overtake Tom Brady in the IBM and USC analysis of Super Bowl XLVI social media sentiment. Overnight results of Super Bowl Twitter buzz drove Giants quarterback Eli Manning’s ‘T score’ for positive sentiment ahead of Tom Brady. Manning now leads with 66% vs. Brady’s 61%, which represents an 8-point shift compared to the previous day. In another interesting development positive sentiment for Giants head coach jumped dramatically with his score rating increasing to 76% positive. That places Coach Coughlin above all of the players and coaches on both teams.

This day-to-day shift in Super Bowl fan sentiment illustrates the speed at which consumer sentiments can shift online — a factor that businesses are watching closely due to the potential impact on their brand equity and sales.

By applying analytics in social media settings we can identify nuances – positive, negative, irony, snarky vs. sincerity, in real-time. That’s enough time to help an organization, or in this case professional athletes, adjust their comments and actions to dramatically (and positively) impact their brands.

Original Post
SUPER BOWL ANALYSIS TAKES US BEYOND THE TWEETS
2 February 2012

One of the most dramatic NFL games ever played was Super Bowl XLII pitting the undefeated (18–0) New England Patriots led by record-setting quarterback Tom Brady against the surprising NY Giants with young, unproven Eli Manning at the helm. A thrilling, some say shocking victory for the Giants ended the Patriots bid to be the only 19–0 undefeated champion in league history. And now Super Bowl XLVI – The Rematch — anticipated to be the most watched American television show in history, promises to take social media to a whole new level.

As my colleague, and former NFL player Kevin Nosbusch posted on Wednesday, IBM and the University of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab are conducting the first sentiment analysis of the two Super Bowl quarterbacks to illustrate how new analytics technologies make it possible to quickly assess the positive, negative and neutral sentiments shared by fans.

Why is this sentiment analysis important to IBM? In addition to being a longtime partner of the NFL, IBM recognizes that its clients, just like football players, are closely connected to their brand presence.

Using advances in analytics companies, academics, journalists can gain new insights into consumer perceptions via social media on endless topics from football and baseball to movies and retailing. Technologies can even distinguish irony and figure out which tweets are just background noise and those that are truly important.

Branding Upset on the Digital Playing Field

The Super Bowl analysis shows us that today the two quarterbacks, Tom Brady and Eli Manning are in statistical dead heat: Brady earning 65% positive sentiment and Eli Manning earning 62% positive sentiment. That actually represents a big branding upset on the digital playing field. Most sports and marketing followers would assume that Brady should be far ahead given his lofty status as an elite QB for many years and three championship rings.

Other noteworthy findings show that wide receivers have upstaged the quarterbacks, who are being positioned in the news media as the chief protagonists — Wes Welker is #1 in positive sentiment and Victor Cruz is a close 2nd. Interestingly Brady leads by 3% points, exactly the point spread Las Vegas oddsmakers have favored the Patriots.

So while it looks like Tom Brady is going into the game as the Social MVP, now is not the time to get cocky. Eli Manning is holding his own against the more experienced Brady in terms of positive sentiment.

The IBM USC analysis illustrates the potential insight and benefits that social media analytics can deliver to a brand — whether you’re an professional football player or a global enterprise. Businesses that ignore the impact of social media will be stuck on the sidelines.

Learn more about IBM and USC AIL social media analysis projects.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, business analytics, Education, entrepreneur, IBM, IBM Research, Jeopardy, nfl, picture stories, predictive analytics, retail, smarter commerce, Smarter Planet, social business, storytelling, twitter, Watson

IBM SmartCamp Finals: Martin Mendez of Bitcarrier Lays Out of Vision of Smarter Traffic Management

2012-02-01T20:06:29Z

Click here to view the embedded video.

Technorati Tags: Bitcarrier, ibm smartcamp, Martin Mendez

Energy Aid – Parliamentary launch during UN Year of Sustainable Energy for All

2012-02-01T18:17:50Z

Jonathan Steel, Energy Aid

Guest post by
Jonathan Steel,
CEO of UK-based charity Energy Aid

Jonathan is also founder and Chairman of technology consultancy The Bathwick Group, and Chairman of Change London, a social enterprise focused on sustainability and youth unemployment.

As we enter the United Nations Year of Sustainable Energy for All, Pauline Latham OBE MP hosted the Parliamentary launch of the newest Global Energy NGO, Energy Aid, at the Houses of Parliament in London. We were supported directly at the launch by DFID, IBM, Practical Action, Seeds for Development and The Ashden Awards.

The evening was one of the first major landmarks for Energy Aid as we continue to expand our presence in the international development field and the energy industry and strive to raise awareness of the need to ensure universal energy access. During the launch we stood among 150 of the UK’s leading business people, academics and political figures and called on them to help support us in our mission to eradicate global energy poverty.

Currently one in five of the world’s population lacks access to electricity, and nearly 3 billion people still cook over open fires. The lives of people in the world’s poorest areas including South America, South Asia and sub Saharan Africa could change forever if they had access to modern energy for heating, lighting, cooking, communications and mechanical work. Access to energy is vital if we are to break the cycle of poverty for hundreds of millions of people around the world.

The plight of energy-poor people was brought to life by Timothy, a farmer from Uganda who spoke about how access to energy has transformed his family’s lives. He also spoke of the opportunities that exist to help communities throughout Uganda and across Africa.

The feedback from this event and from Energy Aid’s presence at the launch of the UN Year in Abu Dhabi has brought the need for our unique collaborative approach to private sector engagement in the third sector into sharp focus. We now have a strong band of supporters from across the governmental, charity and commercial spectrum.

Now that our launch period is over, we are reaching out to corporates, other charities and political leaders and asking for their support. Providing universal energy access is one of the most important challenges of our time – but no one organisation can meet the challenge alone, and collaborative approaches are now needed.

With IBM and international development charity Practical Action as founding partners, Energy Aid plans to provide investment and resources including data, technology and skills to support charities and agencies running or planning energy projects for the disenfranchised, and we are developing a platform for private sector consortia to identify and fund new markets for energy services in many countries around the world.

Our research shows that only a fifth of projects in this space achieve their goals, and there is a lack of long-term planning and investment. We aim to address these shortfalls, combining commercial rigour, corporate expertise and finance with best-of-class NGO experience to create a charity for the 21st century that, working with existing actors, will achieve the change which is so desperately needed.

Follow @energy_aid

Technorati Tags: charity, energy, energyaid, international development, Smarter Energy, uk

IBM SmartCamp Finals: The Importance of Having a Bigger Purpose

2012-02-01T15:42:14Z

Click here to view the embedded video.

Technorati Tags: Bill Reichert, Garage Technology Ventures, ibm smartcamp

IBM SmartCamp Finals: Silicon Valley is Now a Global State of Mind

2012-02-02T01:28:37Z

Back in 1992, when I was the technology editor at the San Jose Mercury News, I wrote in a note attached to the annual Silicon Valley 100 report that Silicon Valley was “a state of mind” rather than a narrow geography. I was thinking that it was a San Francisco Bay Area thing rather than exclusively a Santa Clara Valley thing. Well, today, it’s a global thing.

That reality hit home with me today at the IBM SmartCamp Finals in San Francisco. The winners of nine regional contests conducted last year have gathered here to compete this week to be the global winner of the contest, which offers participants loads of advice from venture capital and business experts and a shot at media attention. These companies came from all over: India, Romania, Israel, Ireland, Spain, China, Brazil, and, yes, the United States–including an outfit, SecureWaters, from Soddy Daisy, Tennessee. Which helps prove my point. These days, a Silicon Valley experience can happen practically anywhere. (Oh, by the way. The “Irish” company is led by a guy from the Ukraine and two guys from Belarus.)

Some of last year's winners

To be sure, the US still gets the lion’s share of venture capital investment–$28 billion last year compared to about half that for the rest of the world. But leading venture capital firms long ago set up satellite offices in China, India and elsewhere, and James Breyer, a top VC at Accel Partners, is crawling all over Brazil these days looking for hot startup investment opportunities.

The Silicon Valley experience has globalized along with everything else. Capital, knowledge work, the innovative spirit and the drive to build a great company and change the way things are done are spreading around the world like water–finding the spots were they can be most effectively put to good and profitable use. Think of it as Virtual Silicon Valley.

One thing that characterizes the new global entrepreneurs is their approach to markets. Rather than concentrating on their home country exclusively during their startup phases, they see the world as their market right from the get go. BitCarrier, a Barcelona-based company that tracks the movements of people and cars real time through mobile Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals emitted by mobile devices, has engagements underway in Europe, South America and the United States. It’s racing to get at least small scale implementations of its technology underway in many cities before competitors can gain toeholds.

Over the next couple of days, the leaders of the nine IBM SmartCamp finalists will get a strong offering of feedback and advice from some of the most knowledgeable investors in the world. Only one company can be the official winner, but the other eight will go back to their home countries all the wiser, carrying with them that Silicon Valley state of mind. “Here, there are no boundaries. Things go mad and crazy. The only limits are your imagination,” says Ronald Zhang, president of Palmap, a SmartCamp finalist from Beijing. “We want to bring the spirit of entrepreneurship back with us to China.”

Technorati Tags: ibm smartcamp

Who’s the Sentimental Super Bowl Favorite?

2012-02-01T14:10:53Z

Kevin Nosbusch is an IBM senior technology consultant based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1973 he played for the Fighting Irish during Notre Dame’s National Championship season, and went on to play for the San Diego Chargers.

When I played football at the University of Notre Dame and for the San Diego Chargers, broadcast television and radio were the primary ways fans enjoyed the game. There was no ESPN, no sports talk radio, the Internet was only known by DARPA scientists and social media didn’t exist.

Gosh, I sound pretty old. But in just 30 years the media and sports industries have been completely transformed by technology. Today, fans are not only Tweeting about their favorite players and teams, but just last week at the Pro Bowl athletes were participating in the virtual conversation on the field at Twitter stations.

This week, IBM and the University of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab (AIL) are conducting an analysis of social media trends related to Super Bowl Quarterbacks Tom Brady and Eli Manning. By analyzing hundreds of thousands of public tweets they’ll determine the fans’ sentimental favorite – the people’s champion if you will.

Like previous analyses on movies, retailing and baseball, analytics makes it possible to understand positive, negative and neutral sentiments of social media commentary, distinguish irony, and even apply machine learning to figure out which tweets are just background noise and those that are truly important. So we can now break down the Big Show’s compelling story lines in a way that traditional media never could.

Take the eternal New York/Boston sports rivalry. Is this a grudge match for the Patriots who had their perfect season ruined by the Giants four years ago? Will Tom Brady be the first quarterback to win four Super Bowls since Joe Montana? With his second Super Bowl in four years, has the Giants’ Eli Manning earned elite status and taken up his brother Peyton’s mantle as arch-rival of Tom Brady? How will the family dynamic affect Eli Manning who will play on his brother’s turf in Indianapolis during Super Bowl XLVI?

Talk radio and sports columns are full of pundits and prognosticators discussing these topics ad nauseam. Coaches and players are focused on playbooks and game strategy. Organizations running commercials are waiting anxiously for consumer reaction. In this context, fans today have an opportunity to both share and learn from others instantly; and they’re providing researchers with an unfiltered voice that is ripe for analysis.

But this is about so much more than analyzing which QB fans are rooting for in Super Bowl XLVI. Uncovering hidden insights from public Twitter comments can help a slew of people, from marketers to the NFL franchise owners, better understand opinions toward players, teams and products. These opinions can no longer go unnoticed, which is why the NFL has wisely established a Super Bowl Social Media Command Center.

We can see from the work that IBM and USC are doing that this notion of shared community engagement continues to expand exponentially thanks to other social media platforms like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube. In this context, sentiment analysis can be applied to learning how consumers perceive brands, reputations of companies and organizations, and new television shows and movies – just to name a few.

So which quarterback will be the social MVP of Super Bowl XLVI? We’ll find out later this week.

In the meantime, the data that IBM and USC are gathering affirms what I’ve known since my playing days — statistics are an important part of sports. And today gathering social media data can be a powerful tool that impacts the bottom lines for businesses of all sizes in all industries.

Learn more about IBM and USC AIL social media analysis projects.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, business analytics, data, Education, IBM, IBM Research, picture stories, predictive analytics, retail, smarter commerce, Smarter Planet, social business, Watson

IBM SmartCamp: The Finalists Pitch to Venture Capitalists

2012-02-01T00:20:44Z

The way IBM SmartCamp works is the startup entrepreneurs make their pitches to venture capitalists, get feedback on the pitches, get deep advice on their business plans, and pitch again. The best pitch wins.

Today, the entrepreneurs took turn giving their first round of pitches. So, lots of PowerPoint presentations. Some nervous CEOs. Others sounding calm and collected. Here’s Ronald Zhang, president of Palmap, a Shanghai startup focusing on collecting and integrating data for indoor mobility mapping apps–for use in shopping malls, airports, schools and the like. He spoke before making his pitch to the VCs.

Click here to view the embedded video.