Synopsis
Brain Gain offers advice to community leaders at all levels on how cities and regions can build economic prosperity while meeting social challenges in an age of fast-paced technological disruption. The fourth book in a series, Brain Gain offers the authors’ latest insights from more than a decade of research into the most Intelligent Communities on the planet. These cities have found ways to prosper from the relentless rise of Information Technology (IT) and connectivity that, in other places, is destroying jobs and making whole industries obsolete at an unprecedented rate. Brain Gain explains how IT is driving global economic change and probes the big issues of work and well-being, the innovation economy, offshoring, immigration and the future of the urban-rural economic divide. The book explores these issues, not in theory or at the global level, but through the experiences of cities and regions that have faced challenging problems and found imaginative solutions. The disruptive forces of technology have an important role to play in overcoming the ill effects of such disruption, but the success of Intelligent Communities described in Brain Gain is the result of their citizens’ leadership, vision, and ambition. Brain Gain looks at at cities as diverse as Taichung, Taiwan, home to 2.6 million people, and Mitchell, South Dakota USA, home to only 15,000. Taichung has used information and communications technology to gives its small-to-midsize manufacturers a global competitive advantage, creating nearly a million new jobs over the past three years, while Mitchell has literally built a new communications engineering and consulting economy employing hundreds of well-paid specialists on top of its traditional agricultural one. Other Intelligent community success stories detailed in Brain Gain include Birmingham, UK; Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA; Columbus, Ohio, USA; Eindhoven, Netherlands; Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada; New York City; Oulu, Finland; Pirai, Brazil; Riverside, California, USA; Stratford, Ontario, Canada; Taipei, Taiwan; Tallinn, Estonia; Taoyuan County, Taiwan; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
About the Author
Robert Bell is co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum, where he heads its research, analysis and content development activities. He directs the multi-stage analysis of communities for the annual Intelligent Community Awards program and authors the in-depth profiles of the Top Seven Intelligent Communities that are core to ICF's mission. Robert developed and leads the Intelligent Community Master Class and Community Accelerator programs, as well as ICF's advisory services for communities, and is a frequent speaker at municipal and telecom events. Serving as the content lead for ICF's annual Summit in New York City, Robert is the author of ICF's founding study, Benchmarking the Intelligent Community. He has contributed articles to The Municipal Journal of Telecommunications Policy, IEDC Journal, Telecommunications, Asia-Pacific Satellite, Asian Communications; and has appeared in segments of ABC World News and The Discovery Channel. A frequent keynote speaker and moderator at municipal and telecom industry events, he has also led economic development missions and study tours to cities in Asia and the US.
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