Cameron Copeland/Benelux
Smarter Planet: Reflections on My First Year as an IBM
Consultant
Big Blue is the epitome of a multinational corporation; with
hundreds of thousands of IBMers distributed across more than 140
countries, it should come as no surprise that IBM is drawing on the
global talent pool to solve some of the most vexing and intractable
challenges our global society faces in the 21st century. IBM is a
unique laboratory environment, a microcosm of the globe that
provides a distinctive perspective on humanity’s most pressing
challenges. The culture of innovation that has been inculcated into new
IBMers for almost a century has given rise to some of the most
important technological advances that have enabled tremendous leaps
in quality of life the world over. Therefore, as a participant in the
company’s most recent initiative, smarter planet, I believe it bears
mentioning as the culmination of a historic lineage of such
transformative ideas as the tabulating machine, the computer, and ebusiness.
IBM’s current leadership and success is built on nearly a century
of experience and transformative change. While the company enjoyed
a period of inimitable success and reached the status of an iconic
technology powerhouse, change is thorny subject even in the most
innovative settings and by the late 1980s IBM itself was thrown into
turmoil by the very revolutions it helped launch. However, it is the
response of visionary IBMers who transformed IBM to meet the
challenges of achieving a smarter planet that counts and may provide
some of the foundation for the solutions to our greatest challenges of
the 21st century.
“Well…what is smarter planet?” you ask. Chances are you have
been a participant in a smarter planet initiative, perhaps unwittingly.
The hallmark of the opportunity is a three-pronged strategy:
instrumentation, interconnectivity, and intelligent systems. The
achievement of instrumentation in your local electricity grid or road
network has been an ongoing challenge requiring significant
investment; however, these efforts have reached a critical mass that
will enable groundbreaking solutions to expanding global challenges,
such as increasingly dense urban environments, dwindling clean water
supplies, and clean energy management. The Internet and other
network technologies have clearly made mass communication and
interconnectivity on a global scale feasible, effectively shrinking the
globe and speeding the rate at which people can make decisions. The
final stage of a smarter planet initiative demands intelligent systems
that can handle the overabundance of data that bombards decisionmakers every minute of every day in order to provide actionable
information and analysis.
Fashioning solutions that integrate these three components is no
easy task and will occupy the world’s best and brightest for the
considerable future. Universities are the primary training ground and,
while I do not consider myself an expert on higher education, there is
no question that higher education establishments need to carefully
assess the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to their future
students' success. It is too early to engage in speculation about my
personal success or impact; however, I feel confident that I was well
prepared by my experiences as a Martindale Associate and Integrated
Business & Engineering/International Relations student.
Cameron Copeland is a Consultant in the Strategy and
Transformation Practice of IBM Global Business Services based in
Boston, MA. He is a graduate of Lehigh University, with a BS in
Integrated Business & Engineering and a BA in International
Relations. As a Martindale Associate, Mr. Copeland’s journal article
documented the history of the largest European steel company,
Arcelor and the impact on the global steel industry of its 2006
merger with Mittal Steel. Mr. Copeland spent his formative years in
Europe and Asia, and as an avid traveller and sailor he continues to
pursue his passion for striking locales and culinary adventures
around the world.