Cities are changing rapidly and they are going to have a greater influence on businesses in the future than even countries. Business leaders need to be understanding now what the implications are and what they need to be doing to capitalise on this emerging trend.
Last year we blogged about and incredible study that the The Mckinsey Global Institute did on the impact of cities in the future. More recently we found a fascinating short film on how cities will drive global change on the Fast Company’s co.exist website. As Morgan Clendaniel, editor of co.exist a Fast Company innovation, says:
“Cities are the future, and innovations to make them better, smarter, and faster are happening every day. Take a beautiful tour of some of the most interesting urban projects and thinking going on today.”
Enjoy watching the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ctxP6Dp8Bk&feature=player_embedded
It’s an interesting topic. I know Steven Johnson is a big advocate of the creative power of cities as drivers of innovation. I read some interesting research recently though on diversity in large groups. One would think that in large groups, with more diversity that we’d interact much more with people different to ourselves, thus fostering the exchange of ideas and so on. The research found however that the opposite occurs. The larger pool of people actually makes it easier to find other people exactly like us, so people became more segmented rather than more integrated. The research is behind a paywall but I’ve summarized it on my blog
http://www.adigaskell.org/blog/2012/01/19/are-big-cities-really-the-innovative-hub-theyre-supposed-to-be/