Keynote 1: Enabling Interoperation in the Emerging Global Smart Cities Data and Services Market

by Davor Meersman – General Manager of the Open and Agile Smart Cities network

Abstract: Smart Cities are becoming a dominant paradigm for local governments around the world. In the wake of the advent of the Internet of Things, cities are transforming themselves from administrative entities into innovation platforms that enable companies, creatives, and researchers to develop and deploy new smart services. Cities around the world are building technological infrastructures that generate, integrate, and stream real-time data about their city, creating a new market and business opportunities in the process. Semantics and ontologies are central to this process of system integration and data publication, both on the level of the city and of overarching global collaboration.

The Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC) initiative is deeply involved with the  standardisation of city data and systems around the world. Employing a light-weight and implementation-driven approach, it has amassed a network of 104 cities that are working on defining common architectures and information models in a blended bottom-up and top-down approach. OASC partners with international organisations such as ETSI and ITU to help shape the semantics of the city with the goal of creating a  global smart city data and services market.

This presentation will provide an overview of the global Smart Cities market, its evolution, future directions, key current and future stakeholders, as well as trends in smart city data management and standardisation. Best practices and use cases will be provided.

Brief Bio: Dr. Davor Meersman is the general manager of the Open and Agile Smart Cities network. OASC groups 104 cities from around the world and focuses on creating a global city data and services marketplace that allows smart city solutions to be developed and deployed in all its member cities. Davor is also one of the founders of City of Things in Antwerp, Belgium, the largest IoT living lab in Europe. He is affiliated with IMEC, the University of Brussels, and an Ambassador of the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals.

Keynote 2: The imperative for the employee-centric theory of organization and its significance for enterprise engineering

by Jan A. P. Hoogervorst – Antwerp Management School

Abstract: Traditional thinking about enterprises considers (executive) management as the primary and exclusive custodians of enterprise performance. Employees, under management control, must behave instrumentally as parts of the enterprise machine. Hence, no employee variety: standard, predefined instrumental behavior, enforced by massive bureaucracy, is often required and expected. The lecture criticizes much of the traditional management perspectives and submits a fundamentally different perspective by arguing that variety in employee behavior is crucial for enterprise operational and strategic performance. Moreover, the instrumental approach to employee behavior conflicts with moral and ethical considerations concerning employees and society at large. Avoiding this conflict and also securing enterprise operational and strategic performance necessitates adopting the employee-centric theory of organization. This comprehensive approach has consequences for the way enterprises are conceptualized. Important implications for the discipline of enterprise engineering will be highlighted.

Brief Bio: Dr. Ir. Jan A.P. Hoogervorst studied Electrical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, and completed his dissertation in Work and Organizational Psychology at the Amsterdam Free University. He held various executive management positions at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and is currently appointed as professor at the Antwerp Management School.