Better Planning Blog

What’s not going to change (in cities) in the next 10 years?

“What’s not going to change in the next 10 years? And I submit to you that that question is actually more important than asking what will change — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in…

Pricing Your (SaaS) Product for Government

Pricing strategy is one of the most under-appreciated elements of a SaaS business. Many SaaS companies struggle with how to price their product. It’s a particularly tricky element in the govtech space given the unique and burdensome process of public…

Pay people to attend public meetings

“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.” 
 — Charlie Munger

I’ve spent my entire career either working in local government or working with local governments. I have a degree in…

Looking Ahead: GovTech Predictions for 2018

The new year provides an opportunity to look forward and imagine what’s possible — and likely — over the next 12 months. The broader govtech / urbantech industry took some steps forward in 2017, but what can we expect to see in 2018? Here are a few…

Civic Engagement is still broken — and a huge opportunity.

When everyone agrees something is a problem, one of two things must be true; (1) There exist an opportunity to solve the problem, or (2) it’s not actually a problem.
 
A decade ago, Nathan and I started MindMixer because we…

Cities are approaching this Amazon RFP all wrong

The lunacy is in the logic, not the desired outcomes. 
 
I’m deeply interested in cities, so I found Amazon’s announcement of HQ2 quite interesting. As did every city leader and elected official in the country. The prospect of luring Amazon and…

The Business of GovTech: Switching Costs

The biggest barrier for govtech is not procurement, it’s the cost associated with adopting new products. Switching costs include both monetary value and time associated with adopting new software. Vendors and agencies tend to focus strictly on the monetary…

Please. No More Dashboards.

The hot thing in govtech right now is dashboards. There are very few govtech companies not offering a dashboard of some kind. It’s a buffet line of dashboard cuisines; financial dashboards, demographic dashboards, open data dashboards, performance management dashboards. Please…