A vision of smarter cities: How cities can lead the way into a prosperous and sustainable future

More than ever, the traditional "bricks-and-mortar" drivers of economic growth are giving way to an economy based on "brains and creativity." Competitive differentiation today is more likely to be based on the ability of the workforce to create and absorb skills and innovation than on traditional drivers such as available natural resources, physical labor or manufacturing prowess. As a result, the skills, aptitude, knowledge, creativity and innovation of a workforce – which collectively can be viewed as the talent pool in the economy – have become increasingly important drivers of economic growth and activity.

Cities, as hubs of the global economy, are the focal points for this transformation. In the immediate future, three interconnected factors will place even more emphasis on the role of cities in talent-based economic development:

• The world is at an unprecedented level of urbanization.
• Cities contain an increasingly large share of the world’s highly skilled, educated, creative and entrepreneurial population, giving rise to highly concentrated and diverse pools of knowledge and knowledge-creation networks.
• Cities can support large-scale business and investment networks that create economies of scale in absorbing and extending innovation

To compete in this new economic environment, cities will need to better apply advanced information technology, analytics and systems thinking to develop a more citizen-centric approach to services. By doing so, they can better attract, create, enable and retain their citizens’ skills, knowledge and creativity.