Rural Movement Technology -

Although Smart Cities technology for large urban centres is the most hyped in media these days, this blog is focused on Smart Village or under 100K in population. We live in Rural Canada and are finding an ever increasing amount of young people moving from large metropolitan areas to the countryside for “the better life”. But even though generally real estate is less expensive, traffic non existent, and outdoor activities are plentiful, we find ourselves with ongoing big city problems. Those are;

Failing infrastructure and government process
Old real estate system preventing innovative development
Lack of startup resources, business opportunities and economic data + action plans
Distraction by too much work and not enough priority efforts
Communication issues from government to citizens

Here is one small community that is pushing the limits of new technology and innovation methodology for it’s evolution.

Innisfil Ontario

“We use innovation as a process to get us to a solution that’s affordable, that’s sustainable,”

“Bringing Uber was a great opportunity. I’m retired. Without it, I have no idea what I would be doing at this point,” Theriault said, smiling, as he drove to the town’s IdeaLab, which is also the library.

“That’s why we do pilot projects. We do trials. We test out these kinds of innovative solutions and with the expectation that it may not work and we are going to learn from it, and we are going to iterate it and make it better the next time. Or we move onto something else and we do that fairly quickly.”