In my last blog post I talked about the importance of collaboration in driving the smart city agenda forward, but how can you make certain that collaborations deliver results?
Achieving truly successful collaborative partnerships are reliant on picking the right team from the outset and in this case, it needs to be one that combines the correct mix of skills and knowledge with people from a diverse cross-section of the community. The reason for this is twofold:
1. Both an in-depth community knowledge (its history, inherent issues etc.) and the right people and skills are required to address challenges and ensure activities have a positive impact
2. You need to prevent a disconnect between what a team of specialists and the community think are the priorities and potential solutions
It might not sound like rocket science, but most people can recount experiences where new "solutions" have been introduced without any community consultation – only to fail miserably.
Despite smart’ s tech focus, teams don’t need to be technology centric, and neither do they have to contain tech savvy people. In fact, embracing team members with varying levels of technological capabilities is key to ensuring that tech-based ideas can be adopted by all end users. Similarly teams need to bring together people of all ages and backgrounds, so that everyone can play a role in shaping their community. No one is ever too young or too old to have a good idea or a valid perspective.
