Jennifer George is the CEO of Strategic Commercialisation Australia, a business development and consulting firm which evaluates and finds partners for deep technical companies - primarily in the medical device and smart city space. She is also the founder and convener of a smart cities networking group designed to bring together interested partners, city councils and smart city entrepreneurs to enhance the growth and interoperability of smart city technologies. The group now represents more than 350 Australian digital companies and is being commercialised into a start-up.

Standards Australia: When did you first become involved in standards development?
Jennifer George: I first became involved in Standards Australia smart cities community in 2019. 

SA: How do standards impact and interact with your industry?
JG: I expect that we will experience massive growth in connected digital technologies in the smart cities sector over the next few years. Knowing more about the emerging standards that underpin these technologies is important because a number of technologies are all emerging at the same time. As industry segments evolve at different rates there is likely to be some overlap in current standards, but I expect these will be refined over time. That’s why I think it’s important for a person who works across sectors, like I do, to be part of this process. We can see those overlaps and help to create a better standard overall.

Additionally, taking a deeper dive into the issues that might limit technology growth right now, like lack of standards for scaling up, helps me to identify new commercial opportunities and I can build these into future Newcos. For example, the recent release of cadastral data creates an opportunity for companies to combine this with existing city data and modelling techniques to create new future-based modelling services for architects and city planners. This business can only be scalable if all the data meets some kind of standard.

SA: In the growing world of Sustainable Cities and Communities, why are accessible standards important?
JG: I commercialise deep technology (deep tech) so understanding the standards, even though they are not requirements, helps to ensure that the technologies that SMEs are building can scale and will interoperate with other devices overtime. I work a lot in data analytics so when we are talking about extracting value from whole city data it is important for that data to be of high quality, to be relevant and for it to be easily combined to other available data in a meaningful way. Standards help to achieve this.

SA: What is the future of standardisation?
JG: Standardisation is key for market growth. This is evident by the fact that every time we see the emergence of new technologies followed by second-to-market participants, it calls for standards to improve interoperability follow soon after. I work on the cutting edge of innovation, building new digital companies or helping new companies that already exist to flesh out their business offering, so naturally if something is newly invented standards must follow shortly after.

Take for example autonomous vehicles, at the moment these vehicles operate mostly in selective loop situations but once they are operating on a multitude of different road types, the OEMs that make the vehicles will have to be able to identify standards for road conditions, connectivity and compatible traffic signals to assist the vehicles to operate efficiently and safely anywhere. When this happens across many roads standards will then assist in full scale growth. If we don’t have the certainty that standards provide, industry growth would be much slower indeed.

Pictured, from left: Clarissa Brandt of Timber Queensland, representing the Women in Forestry Network, Peter Zed, Omega Consulting, chair, Simon Dorries, CEO, Responsible Wood, and David Rawlinson, independent environmental expert.