What is the 2thinknow City Focus Index?

It's a colour-coded Focus Index with benchmark scores that clearly and simply communicates to stakeholders progress towards a goal you set. This would be some sort of change or transformation initiative.

What sort of change initiatives can the 2thinknow City Focus Index be used for?

Any. Common examples include:

• Becoming more innovative
• Growing the urban economy
• Increasing support for startup and tech eco-system
• Moving towards being a Smart City
• Becoming more eco-friendly or sustainable
• Measuring diversity levels
• Or any other change initiative.

How does the City Focus Index work?

Simple. Our analyst select (or create for you), City Indicators that are designed to benchmark your city by reducing complex data points to a benchmark score.

We then select cities to benchmark your city against.

How many Cities can I select for my City Focus Index?

We recommend a minimum of 8, and while there is no upper limit, a set of up to 10-40 cities is often meaningful. By default there are 500 cities to select from, but in reality we can do almost any cities you choose.

How many Indicators should I select for my City Focus Index?

While there is no minimum, we would suggest that is 5 indicators at the lower end with 10-50 Indicators being more useful and typical.

Can I measure multiple Change Initiatives from different stakeholders?

Indicators can be grouped into multiple themes you choose - e.g. Smart Cities, Sustainability, Nascent Tech, Startups, Infrastructure. You are not limited to any set of themes, so you can create pretty much any City Focus Index you like.

Will 2thinknow Analysts help me decide what to include?

Yes, we can recommend indicators and comparison cities based on your objectives. Just tell us what you are trying to achieve at your city.

What are the Indicators that go into the City Focus Index?

There are 162 Indicators listed here. These are a broad range of standard Indicators covering every aspect of cities.

We also can add custom Indicators, as many as you need if your preferred Indicator is not on list.

What is in an Indicator?

Indicators comprise Benchmark Scores and a series of data points. Benchmark Scores make it easy to quickly measure your city and present complex information to stakeholders.

Why 2thinknow Indicators?

Results from 2thinknow Indicators span 500+ cities, so our data-set is graded against 500+ cities.

Nobody else than 2thinknow offers our data capabilities, as well as our massive base data set, and our experience which dates to our early research in 2005, and has been improved every year against commercial requirements.

I am under deadline pressure, how quickly can my City Focus Index be done?

We like to say 2-4 weeks allowing time to select, however, it can be finalised after payment within as little as a week. On occasion we have done projects in 3 business days (although this is not preferred as we have to quickly allocate a lot of resources to your Focus Index).

How else can 2thinknow help me in my job?

We give you time to focus on strategy and objectives not data skills and data sets which can be highly irregular and not standard at all.

Our analysts at 2thinknow have highly specialised skills in data science and data analysis for cities, as well as special proprietary data and systems to create your City Focus Index. So you only need select the theme and key indicators you want. We even recommend indicators, making the process easy.

Are there any locations where the City Focus Index is not available?

Yes. Currently Japan or China are unavailable.