Rich Market Opportunities: Startups and Open Government

Last night I did the keynote/opener for a startup event in Boston and spoke about, based upon my own experiences, startup best practices and the large number of opportunities for startups and other companies to get involved with the fast growing open government marketplace.

While you can scan through the slides themselves I wanted to add a bit more explainer text, since I am not standing in front of you right now, in terms of where the greatest opportunities are for companies wishing to get involved with open government. For your benefit, here are my two cents:

• Strategists. There is a need for strategic guidance across local and federal governments and agencies. While there are clear differences between the public and private sector there are also many commonalities and business strategist can add value to governments looking to become more open.
• Application developers. For a moment, take a look at data.gov. What do you see? Data, free information, waiting to be combined and shared in unique and interesting ways that the government is essentially begging you to begin using. In California, as one example, their recent application contest resulted in 5 new startups. New jobs, new opportunities, new markets. This opening up of data is taking place across the world and at all levels of government. Opportunities abound.

Are there other opportunities? Of course. Marketers, consultants, and others are needed as well. Be creative everyone as there is plenty of room for innovation around open government and the private sector must continue to get involved.

Start Ups and Open Government