Building the Future

Some innovations are particularly complex. As shown by examples such as smart cities or driverless cars, they require setting up a whole new ecosystem of infrastructures, actors and legislation. They thus cannot be achieved without an intensive collaboration between diverse actors who naturally have their own perspective and way of doing things. Managing to mobilize such an extended collaboration constitutes a very peculiar challenge.

To study this subject, Amy C. Edmondson and Susan Salter Reynolds observed for several years a start-up, Living PlanIT. Its ambition was to create a “pilot” smart city, which would be used as a testing ground for the development of software for the intelligent management of tomorrow’s urban environment. In this book, the authors describe the efforts of this technology start-up to build this ambitious project with the necessary partners: technology entrepreneurs, real-estate agents, political figures, architects, construction companies, etc. They show how the cornerstone of this type of innovation is the capacity to breathe and maintain a trans-sectorial cooperation, in a high-uncertainty context. In the last two chapters, they draw the lessons and recommendations in terms of leadership. A work anchored in a thorough field analysis.