< Previous18 G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC EGreater Phoenix is three-fourths of the state’s economy.Source: Jim Rounds #17 IN TECHGreater Phoenix has the seventh-fastest growing market in U.S. and a 3% growth rate since 2006.Source: FRED Economic Data of Arizona’s new jobs by 2026 willbe in Greater Phoenix.Source: CBRE Scoring Tech TalentSource: tucson.comGREATER PHOENIXWAS RANKEDTALENT GROWTH.$Best U.S. Cities for Renters1. Scottsdale2. Peoria3. Chandler4. Gilbert9. Mesa10. TempeSource: WalletHub75%G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC E 19SM A R T R EG I O N I N I T I A T I V Ehat is a smart region?To Arizona State University’s Chris Richardson, it is a place where cities communicate with their citizens, the people talk to government, organizations connect with other groups, and cities talk to each other — all in real time.Richardson should know. As the deputy chief information officer of development, mobility and smart cities at ASU, he interacts with multiple organizations that oversee everything from the integration of the Internet of Things to autonomous transportation to voice enablement.But it’s not just about integrating more technology into our everyday communications and mobile devices, says Richardson. Building a smart region in Greater Phoenix requires massive coordination at multiple levels of government, education, business and the citizenry.“A smart region means that groups are working together,” he says. “They are evolving to leverage technology and transform their community. Any way that a city operates and engages with its citizens is fair game for disruption.”ASU, ranked for four years running as the No. 1 university for innovation, is no stranger to collaboration in entrepreneurship, especially when it involves technology. That’s why the school is taking the lead by launching the new Center for Smart Cities and Regions. The center will work to improve the ability of communities to leverage the IoT and other new technologies to advance overall economic, social and cultural health.“We increasingly have the tools and the technologies to address local, regional and global problems,” said Diana Bowman, associate dean, co-director of the center and associate professor with the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. “However, unless these by R O N S TA R N E RWAs cities grow more intelligent, so does an interconnected region.GETSMART“Any way that a city operates and engages with its citizens is fair game for disruption.”— Chris Richardson, Deputy Chief Information Officer of Development, Mobility and Smart Cities, Arizona State University20 G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC Etechnologies are developed and deployed in a way that is responsive and responsible, their potential benefits are unlikely to be realized.”One Region, Many PartnersOne of the center’s first partnerships will be with the Arizona Institute for Digital Progress (AZiDP), Arizona State University and the Greater Phoenix Economic Coucil who, on March 28 of this year, announced the Greater Phoenix Smart Region initiative at the Smart Cities Conference in Kansas City. Dominic Papa (pictured), executive director and co-founder of AZiDP, said, “By partnering with the Center for Smart Cities and Regions at ASU, the regional effort will be able to continually refine smart technology solutions. This partnership will enable the region to harness the knowledge and capacity of the most innovative university in the nation.”The joint effort will encompass a variety of existing regional initiatives including ASU as Smart Living Lab, Governance of Autonomous Vehicles, the Smart City Academy, and opening pathways for discovery, research and innovation in health.Papa says that AZiDP is the not-for-profit technology and innovation “Do-Tank” for the Greater Phoenix Smart Region initiative. “AZiDP’s ‘Smart Region as a Service’ platform empowers local governments, private industry and academic research institutions to collaboratively design and develop new innovative technology pilots that advance solutions to public challenges, have a measurable impact, and the potential to scale,” he says. “This multi-party innovation process accelerates the adoption and implementation of technology solutions that solve specific city and region issues and real citizens’ needs.”He adds that “AZiDP provides the platform for business executives that are looking to test and deploy innovative civic technologies at scale. In partnership with the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, AZiDP is connecting 22jurisdictions in Greater Phoenix and the country’s largest public university to utilize the power of smart city technology to align digital roadmaps, and view technological improvement from a macro, region-wide scale. Through this new culture of collaboration, AZiDP aims to create the country’s largest and most connected smart region.”Using ASU as a Living LaboratoryBuilding a smart region isn’t about creating programs, says Richardson. It’s about making life better for everyone who lives and works in Greater Phoenix. “We’re trying to build something that resonates with people and that they will gravitate toward,” he says. “It takes time and investment over the long term, but we’re already achieving results.”Having the horsepower of the Fulton Schools of Engineering helps. “We have more engineering students at ASU than the entire student body of Georgia Tech and Ford Fusion Hybrid data collection cars sit in the parking lot at Intel Corporation’s Chandler Advanced Vehicle Lab in Chandler, Arizona.Photo by Tim Herman courtesy of Intel CorporationMIT,” says Richardson. “Our engineering graduates enter the Valley workforce. They are of the highest quality that you’ll find anywhere in the country, and they’re choosing to stay here.”Why is this important to business investors? “Business executives want to know that the business environment of a region is conducive to them,” Richardson says. “We have a pro-business governor, as well as a government that creates and facilitates the ability to innovate. Whether it’s providing a safe regulatory environment for the development of FinTech or autonomous vehicles or blockchain technology, we have it all in Arizona.”He adds that “building a connected place is all about enabling the talent, the innovation and the opportunity. We’re building the mechanisms needed to scale all three.”In short, he says, that’s how you build a smart region. 22 G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC Ef you haven’t followed the latest news in blockchain technology, you’re missing out on one of the hottest tech trends since the advent of Netflix. How big is blockchain? Consider this: the global blockchain market is predicted to be $20 billion by 2024; the average investment in blockchain projects last year was $1 million; and IBM is investing $200 million into blockchain-powered Internet of Things work.If that doesn’t grab your attention, perhaps this will. Greater Phoenix is poised to become the blockchain capital of the country.Through a combination of innovative lawmaking, creative entrepreneurs and a high-powered higher education system, the Arizona desert is rapidly becoming the go-to oasis of cryptocurrency firms and related blockchain startups. Companies like Dash, SweetBridge, Arena, Nexus, Coldti, Propy, Camp BX and KryptoPal already call Greater Phoenix home, and more are joining them every month.Blockchain, in short, is software that relies on multiple computers to create a tamper-proof ledger of transactions. Cryptocurrency miners are among the most well-known blockchain adopters because they mine online networks 24/7 to validate transactions. Successful miners are rewarded with cryptocurrency, Bitcoin being the most popular of some 1,200 types. The reward lowers transaction fees by creating an incentive to add to the processing power of the network. As of Sept. 14, one bitcoin was valued at $6,487.A growing group of firms in Greater Phoenix has found success and security while innovating in blockchain. Their innovation has been enhanced by the steady stream of engineering and FinTech talent coming out of Arizona State University, Grand Canyon University, Maricopa Community College, Mesa Community College and other schools in the Valley.Facilitating innovation in this B LO C K CH A I N TE CH N O LO G YArizona lays a firm foundation for innovators in cryptocurrency and related fields.by R O N S TA R N E RIG R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC E 23emerging sector is landmark legislation, Arizona House Bill 2417, which makes it easier to accept electronic signatures on contracts, and the groundbreaking FinTech Regulatory Sandbox.Dragan Boscovic, technical director of the Center for Assured and Scalable Data Engineering (CASCADE) at ASU, came to ASU in October 2016 after being a technology executive with Motorola in Europe, China and the U.S. “I have a good track record in identifying game-changing technologies,” he says, “and right now one of the biggest is blockchain.”ASU launched the Blockchain Research Lab and Blockchain Innovation Society after Boscovic met the founder and CEO of Dash, a commonly traded cryptocurrency. “We happened to live in the same building complex in Arizona,” Boscovic says. “They wanted to build a stronger relationship with ASU. They were housed at SkySong — the ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center — and they started with a $50,000 investment.”Likeminded firms are flocking to the desert, he says, because “Arizona has created a welcoming climate for blockchain firms. The regulatory framework does not impede innovation. Plus, more than 6,000 students are studying computer science here. As a result, we are launching a program with a focus on blockchain within the ASU School of Computer Science. Other cryptocurrency firms will establish operations in Arizona because of this.”Sweetbridge is one of them. Located at Galvanize, the Center of Entrepreneurship in Phoenix, Sweetbridge won an award for innovation in supply chain using blockchain and is quickly ramping up thanks to its ability to tap into talent at ASU and other schools in the area.“We are a little over a year old,” says Will Munsil, general counsel for Sweetbridge. “We are an open source project to make commerce of all kinds more affordable and more accessible for everyone — from businesses to individuals.”Founded by Scott Nelson, the founder and CEO of Trax Technologies, Sweetbridge is a finance platform for commerce with a heavy supply chain focus.Phoenix is developing a tech ecosystem, with government as a willing partner.KryptoPal is another local success story. A platform to develop applications, websites, POS systems and IoT devices, KryptoPal uses blockchain technologies to help non-techies access the blockchain.“We got started about a year ago,” says Jaycen Horton, chief technology officer for KryptoPal, which is also based at Galvanize. “We met up at a local meetup in Phoenix called Desert Blockchain. We moved into an office at Galvanize in October 2017 in downtown Phoenix. We are right across the hall from Sweetbridge.”KryptoPal celebrated its full launch on Aug. 8 and plans to grow swiftly, says Horton. “There are lots of people building solutions for blockchain and crypto-technology in Phoenix. People can stay here and work on these emerging technologies because they can work with several companies in this market.” Photo courtesy of Galvanize24 G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC EFI N T EC H S A N D B O XArizona is the first state in the nation to issue an open invitation to financial technology pioneers.by A D A M B RU N SGo to the home page of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and you’ll see some pretty important drop-down menu labels across the top: “Consumer,” “Criminal” and “Civil Rights” among them. Like signs outside a business establishment, they tell you where to go for what you need.Among those nine labels is “FinTech,” which tells you all you need to know about Arizona’s “Open for Business” sign for this revolutionary business sector. The state in 2018 became the first in the nation to pass legislation enabling a regulatory sandbox designed to help entrepreneurs blossom like so many cactus flowers across the FinTech landscape.Why offer such a thing? Accord-ing to FinTech experts, when it comes to pushing the envelope with innovation, it pays to have a regulatory safe space within which to experiment, so that — much like autonomous vehicles, where Arizona also excels — and advances can progress with as little impediment as possible.Greater Phoenix already has a welcoming environment for financial services and FinTech thanks to steady cultivation of the sector over the years. The metro area’s finance and insurance cluster is one of the 10 largest in the nation, and the number of FinTech startups in the region already has risen by more than 50 percent since 2011. Among the renegades-turned-established players: Secure payment transfer technology Zelle, created by Early Warning Services, LLC, employs more than 700 throughout the Greater Phoenix region.Many of those employees come from the more than 1,100 students earning degrees in accounting, finance, economics, mathematics and customer service-related areas from Greater Phoenix universities each year. And many of those graduates are cooking up revolutionary tech of their own.While it might surprise some to see such a measure come under the umbrella of a state attorney general, it won’t surprise those who know Brnovich, who has been honored by the National Image: Getty ImagesG R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC E 25Federation of Independent Business as a “Champion of Small Businesses.” Among the posts he served in before becoming Arizona’s Attorney General in 2015 was director of the Arizona Department of Gaming. He initiated the sandbox legislation, sponsored by Representative Jeff Weninger, to encourage businesses to develop innovative products and services in the financial services sector.Attorney General Brnovich responded to a few questions about what playing in the new sandbox could mean for the sector and for his state.How do you think Arizona’s sandbox distinguishes the state from competitors? Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich: Arizona’s FinTech Sandbox is the first in the United States, so our sandbox offers a runway to launch into a growing market locally or prove a concept that could expand beyond Arizona. I think Arizona is the right kind of place to implement this regulatory model, and being “first to market,” so to speak, is an opportunity to attract marketplace innovation to Arizona. We have always been a state that prides itself on doing things as it sees best and not being afraid to give new ideas a chance to succeed. The FinTech Sandbox is very much within that spirit. A key difference between ours and others? We don’t utilize cohorts. Rather, we accept applications on a rolling basis.What sort of feedback have you received from the corporate and startup sectors since this measure was signed into law?Brnovich: We have had a lot of positive feedback and interest from both sectors since launching Arizona’s FinTech Sandbox on Aug. 3rd. So far, we’ve received several applications, and expect several more before the end of the year. We’ve talked with interested companies here in the United States and overseas.It appears your efforts are a model that the U.S. Department of the Treasury would like to emulate at the federal level. How would federal sandbox legislation affect Arizona’s sandbox?Brnovich: We are encouraged that the federal government seems to be recognizing the need to create space for innovation in the country’s regulatory frameworks. Whatever the federal government decides to do, we hope they will account for state-specific initiatives and seek to complement those efforts. Let’s Get Granular:The FinTech Sandbox explainedWhat is FinTech? “FinTech encompasses new ways of providing trad itional financial services, such as banking, payment systems, or investment advice,” explains the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. “Accessing a bank account and making transfers via a smartphone app (commonly called mobile banking) is one example of a FinTech product. There are many different FinTech products, but each at its core delivers a financial service to a consumer in an innovative way.”What is a sandbox? The Regulatory Sandbox Program (RSP) allows financial services companies to test innovative products and technology in market for up to 24 months without obtaining a license or other authorizations that might otherwise be required. By statute, the program ends on July 1, 2028.Is Arizona working with other jurisdictions that have sandboxes? The law allows the Attorney General’s Office to enter into agreements with other jurisdictions to form cooperative arrangements regarding each jurisdiction’s sandbox.“Arizona has always been a state for big ideas and this is just one more place where we are trailblazing in entrepreneurship and innovation. I hope to see the sandbox serve as a catalyst for capital investment in Arizona and provide opportunities for Arizona businesses and consumers to thrive.” — Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich“26 G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC En the U.S., Hispanics make up 16 percent of the workforce but only 6 percent of the national STEM workforce. In places like Arizona, where the Hispanic population is more than 30 percent and tech-based opportunities abound, statistics like this are fueling efforts to bring more women and minorities into STEM fields. With so much momentum building behind the tech industry in Greater Phoenix, many institutions of higher learning are building a strong and nimble talent pipeline to serve the industry for years to come.More than 40 universities and higher education institutions are in the region including: Arizona State University, Grand Canyon University, Maricopa Community Colleges, Northern Arizona University, University of Arizona and University of Phoenix. The Greater Phoenix region is well educated with more than 85 percent of the population having a high school diploma and more than 29 percent having earned at least a bachelor’s degree. With nearly 72,000 students across the university’s five campuses, Arizona State University has been ranked the most innovative university in the country for the last four years in a row. The university was also ranked No. 5 by the Wall Street Journal for having the best-qualified graduates. In August, The National Science H I G H ER ED U C A T I O NEducational institutions in Greater Phoenix are driving innovation and technology know-how. by SAVA NN A H K I N G IG R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC E 27Foundation awarded Phoenix College, part of the Maricopa County Community College District, $1.5 million to support minority STEM education. ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences researchers will collaborate with Phoenix College to develop Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURE). By incorporating multidisciplinary CUREs into STEM curriculum throughout the district, the program is expected to impact more than 3,000 community college students. Maricopa Community Colleges is the largest public community college system in the U.S. and has more than 190,000 students enrolled each year at its 10 campuses. Innovation is part and parcel for educational programs in the region. Beyond traditional four- and two-year degree programs, the area is home to several non-traditional, career-based training schools. In Phoenix’s Warehouse District, technology’s talent gap is being further reduced by Galvanize, a software development training school with eight campuses across the U.S. The 50,000-sq.-ft. campus opened in early 2017 and has since become a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity through its coworking and startup incubation, and world-class technology education programs focusing on coding, web development and data science. Galvanize offers Photo: Getty ImagesG R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC E 27Next >