Adapt or die, I thought to myself as I read about Amazon’s new plan to deliver packages inside your home.
You have probably heard of this new program, called Amazon Key, which allows delivery people to enter your home and place packages in a pleasant and safe way in your kitchen, hallway, living room … wherever.
It was recently launched in 37 US cities. Just buy Amazon’s $ 120 internet connected security camera called Amazon Cloud Cam and a smart lock (together they cost at least $ 250), download the Amazon Key app and you are ready for this option.
I recently had to talk to Amazon about a package that never made it to my door, if it was stolen by someone who really needed a kitchen counter banana holder or if something happened in transit, I will never know. The service rep was great at returning my money, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t have to worry about stolen packages ever again.
So I am considering this option. (If you’re like me and you’re not sure whether to trust strangers, no matter how well vetted, in your home, you’ll understand why it’s taking me so long to make up my mind.)
When I started thinking about this big change in our delivery system options, the HG Wells quote I mentioned earlier crossed my mind: Adapt or die.
There are so many “smart” innovative designs hitting the market these days that it’s hard to keep up. The Internet of Things (IoT) trend is clearly happening, and in a major, paradigm-shifting way.
We are already adapting the neighborhoods with “future design” in mind. Since October, there have been at least three big announcements about smart cities:
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Bill Gates just invested $ 80 million to build a smart city in Arizona. This high-tech development will be built outside of Phoenix and, as CNN reports, will feature “high-speed networks, autonomous vehicles, high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and autonomous logistics centers.”
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In October, Alphabet Inc.’s urban innovation organization Sidewalk Labs committed $ 50 million for a similar smart city in Toronto. The motto of the company is “reinventing cities from the Internet”, and this city is a perfect example. The cost of the project is likely to exceed $ 1 billion, with a focus on driverless car lanes, public Wi-Fi hubs, and other modern advancements.
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And earlier this week, Cisco announced that it plans to invest $ 1 billion to develop smart cities around the world, which will use its Cisco Kinetic of Cities IoT platform.
Clearly, it’s not just our delivery systems that are getting updated. Our entire life path is changing as smart money flows into building a world that previously only resided in science fiction stories.
We may not want to adapt to all the smart innovations hitting the market, but we still have to adapt our investment strategies if we want to stay ahead of the curve.
So follow the smart money if you haven’t already. Start researching the building blocks of these smart cities and see which companies are gearing up for explosive growth.