Smart City – A Stepping Stone to a Smart Society
Learn more about how Eindhoven has shifted its focus from laws and regulations that describe yesterday’s world to experiments and initiatives of its residents, businesses, research institutions and other parties in civil society.
Last updated 1 March 2025
This article has been migrated from an earlier version of the site and may display formatting inconsistencies.
Lecture details
Smart City – A Stepping Stone to a Smart Society
28 March 2016
3.00pm – 5.00pm. Registration from 2.30pm, seated by 3.00pm
Civil Service College Auditorium
Lecture videos
Full Lecture
“Eindhoven’s method”
Can companies organise societies better than governments?
We need to know what’s not working
Dealing with Singapore’s new S-curve
Data are owned by the people themselves
Can there be hospitals without beds?
Synopsis
The massive emergence of technological solutions to the multi-faceted problems cities face have given rise to the ‘Smart City’; do solutions only come from big technological firms? Can we find similar initiatives from the population? Most ideas are born in cities where scale is right for entrepreneurs, knowledge institutes and people to influence each other. How can cities experiment possibilities to break moulds? Mayor Rob van Gijzel will share how Eindhoven has shifted its focus from laws and regulations that describe yesterday’s world to experiments and initiatives of its residents, businesses, research institutions and other parties in civil society. He will also describe how cities can move towards ‘humanized technology’ – technology developed in collaboration with citizens.
Lecture report
There are as many cities calling themselves “smart cities”, but they are only bringing in technology without bringing value… a smart society is one where the people are involved; it is a circular economy.
According to the OECD, Eindhoven in the Netherlands has an average of 22.6 patents produced per 10,000 residents, making it the most inventive city in the world. (In comparison, San Diego, which claims second spot, produces 8.9 patents per 10,000 residents.)
But just two decades ago, in the mid-1990s, the city lost a third of its labour and faced a severe economic crisis.
Eindhoven Mayor Rob van Gijzel described how the city had invited corporates, creative institutes and entrepreneurs to make proposals in solving the crisis. By 2000, the city embarked on its Open Innovation strategy.
This strategy departs from the usual “closed” innovation model, where firms do their own R&D, manufacturing and marketing — leading to high entry barriers for newcomers that lack funding. In open innovation, for example, IP is not locked up for internal use; firms are encouraged to commercialise their IP by sharing them as much as possible. The Eindhoven government would also share the risk of expensive research, while benefitting from a more efficient exchange of ideas in the marketplace.
The mayor described recent examples, including Eindhoven’s Living Lab where Philips had asked the government to bring together stakeholders to test a health-monitoring prototype device for the elderly. Hospitals, patient care centres, and the elderly were invited to the experiment, which found the device very effective — but lacking in human contact. Philips is now creating a completely different product, he said, to meet the more compelling needs that arose.
Eindhoven is also introducing a new night-lighting system. By working with youth, shop owners, lighting designers and security firms, city lights are reduced to a small glow when streets are empty, and turned on fully when a person approaches. Residents and shop owners can also adjust lighting colours to their preference.
Mayor van Gijzel noted that the increasing speed of technological innovation has made it much harder for cities to plan for the future:
I was recently invited to Beijing where they shared their 20-year plan… It is hard to plan within such a wide timespan… Having knowledge and being smart are important, but [it is] most critical is to be adaptive. Just as we see in Darwinism — the most adaptive species will survive — it is also true [of cities].
Trial and error are necessary to invent the future, said the mayor, and this requires adaptability. “When heads of states sign agreements, nothing happens,” he said, but when governments work with entrepreneurs together with research institutes, better solutions come about more quickly.
Governments have “to admit there are solutions on the ground,” he said, raising examples where disruptive technologies — Uber, Airbnb, Netflix and Google — have had to deal with legislative blocks.
Similarly, as a city mayor, it is important to loosen “control” and not be fixated only with successful solutions.
“To become a frontrunner is to let go,” he concluded.
Written by Leong Wen Shan.
About the Speakers
SPEAKER
Rob van Gijzel
Mayor
Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Rob van Gijzel has been the Mayor of Eindhoven, the fifth largest city in the Netherlands, since 2008. Prior to this, Mayor Gijzel worked for the Dutch Labour Party at the European Parliament in 1980 and became a Member of Parliament for the Dutch Labour Party in 1989. Rob van Gijzel is also chairman of the Eindhoven Metropolitan Region, the Brainport Foundation and the International Community Forum Foundation (ICFF), based in New York.
MODERATOR
Professor Low Teck Seng
CEO,
National Research Foundation
Prior to joining the NRF, Professor Low was the Managing Director of the Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR). He is presently a tenured professor at the National Technological University (NTU) and holds an appointment as Senior Advisor to President, NTU.