Ur­ban ar­eas are ex­pect­ed to swell to al­most five bil­lion peo­ple by 2030 with many of these ur­ban­i­ties be­ing un­der­priv­i­leged, ac­cord­ing to a study by the Unit­ed Na­tions Pop­u­la­tion Fund.In prepa­ra­tion for this rapid growth, de­vel­op­ing coun­tries need to in­no­vate now, a top­ic that a lead­ing Mi­crosoft ex­ec­u­tive will dis­cuss at the VI­II Amer­i­c­as Com­pet­i­tive­ness Fo­rum 2014, which will be held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, from Oc­to­ber 8-10.

Mark Day, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Gov­ern­ment In­dus­try, World­wide Pub­lic Sec­tor, Mi­crosoft Cor­po­ra­tion, will join busi­ness lead­ers and oth­er in­no­v­a­tive thinkers at the fo­rum themed The Hu­man Imag­i­na­tion at Work: Dri­ving Com­pet­i­tive­ness, Pow­er­ing In­no­va­tion. IDay's pre­sen­ta­tion on the open­ing day will fo­cus on the use of lead­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and plat­form ex­pe­ri­ences with cloud and mo­bile so­lu­tions that can help both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors ac­cel­er­ate their mod­erni­sa­tion ef­forts.

"Tech­nol­o­gy plays a piv­otal role in not on­ly ad­vanc­ing eco­nom­ic growth but al­so in help­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions bridge the gap be­tween the glob­al en­vi­ron­ment, their em­ploy­ees and their cit­i­zens and com­mu­ni­ties," Day said.

"Mi­crosoft is fo­cused on the de­vel­op­ment of ICT in­fra­struc­tures, ev­i­dent through our work with pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions across the globe and here in T&T. For ex­am­ple, we re­cent­ly launched CityNext, an ini­tia­tive to em­pow­er cit­i­zens, gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es to shape a pos­i­tive fu­ture for their cities, and we will open the first Mi­crosoft In­no­va­tion Cen­tre in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean."

To­day, Day will for­mal­ly open the Mi­crosoft In­no­va­tion Cen­ter (MIC), lo­cat­ed at the Cariri Cen­tre for En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment in Freeport. Mi­crosoft al­ready has over 116 cen­tres world­wide, in­clud­ing in ma­jor high-tech economies like Aus­tralia, Switzer­land, Sin­ga­pore and In­dia.

As in the var­i­ous coun­tries where MICs op­er­ate, the lo­cal cen­tre will pro­vide world-class re­sources and sup­port for stu­dents, IT pro­fes­sion­als, aca­d­e­m­ic re­searchers, en­tre­pre­neurs and start-ups, ac­cel­er­at­ing the cre­ation of new com­pa­nies, jobs and growth of the lo­cal soft­ware ecosys­tem.