LetsNurture series – Know Your State- Illinois

In the last installment of our ongoing series of ‘Know your state’, we discovered fascinating things about California. California was interesting to explore, in terms of its affinity for tech companies.

Let’s explore Illinois, next in the series.

The Land of Lincoln

The capital of Illinois is Springfield. Illinois has around 12 million of population. Popular cities of Illinois are Chicago, Aurora and Rockford. Abraham Lincoln belonged to Illinois. Also, Lincoln is a city in Illinois named after the late President Abraham Lincoln.

Chicago is the home to a company that we admire: Basecamp. We use Basecamp for client communication. It helps in the alignment of the process.

Business service sector is a key industry of Illinois followed by manufacturing of machinery. Chemical manufacturing ranks third. Illinois is a leading manufacturing state with machinery (construction equipment, farm machinery, machine tools) ranking first in this sector. Caterpillar Inc, a manufacturing giant is based in Illinois. Boeing, Walgreen, John Deere, Gardner Denver, Mondelez International, and Abbott laboratories are few of the big brands that are headquartered in Illinois.

Few of the fun facts about Illinois are as below:

If you are in Illinois you have to choose between the Cubs and the Sox. These are the two rival teams of baseball.  Baseball is a celebrated sports in Illinois. You have to try the ‘Chicago hot dog’ without ketchup. I repeat, do not ask for ketchup. Also, you should try horseshoes and deep dish pizza to enlighten your taste buds.

The weather is pretty much cold. Hence, Chicago is named as ‘the windy city’ due to the cold breeze constantly blowing there. Illinois observes heavy snowfall during winters.

You can find the historic Paramount theatre in Aurora. Popular spots to visit in Illinois are: Sears Towers (The Wills Towers), The Bean (Cloud Gate), Millennium park, Navy Pier, Brookfield Zoo, Six Flags Great America, and Lincoln Park Zoo.

Transforming into a Smart State

Being one of the leading IT outsourcing companies, we love to explore the new innovation in technology around the world. We were really excited to know that Illinois is been thriving to become the first ‘Smart State’ of US. The Illinois CIO, Hardik Bhatt, has been working hard to improve efficiencies while making Illinois the first smart state in the nation.

By adopting IoT solutions into practice, Illinois is changing the way the workforce is being seen. Partnering with Cisco, Illinois has initiated a digital revolution. Adopting IoT solutions for several purposes, Hardik Bhatt joined hands with the International Data Corporation to assess the initial plan. They determined that there were three roles to focus on to become a smart state. The first role is the state as a customer; the second role is the state as an enabler; and the third role is the state as a demand aggregator.

Consolidating data analytics and IoT solutions, they are thriving to empower governments to create new constituent experiences, enable workforce innovation and transform how they deliver services to those who live, work and play within their communities. Their core purpose is to bring together companies, academia and educators all into an ecosystem to help share best practices and drive organizational transformation through building the talent and skills needed for digitization jobs of the future.

Novel Startups of Illinois

Agrible Inc.

Agrible is s a big data technology and data products company, focused on providing IoT solutions that farmers and agricultural companies can use easily every day to improve their production with cloud-based delivery systems. With products like Pocket Drone Control and Morning Farm Report, this innovative startup is providing revolutionary IoT solutions to the farmers to rapidly supplement traditional crop damage inspections and assessments.

Intellihot

Intellihot is focused on creating more efficient water heating systems. Their ‘tankless’ water heaters heat water as it is needed. They recently launched the next generation of their products with touchscreens and an accompanying mobile app, which are also IoT and wifi-compatible.

Nurturing Illinois

Knowing that Illinois is thriving to adopt IoT solutions, we are excited to explore further on how they implement this technology. We have nurtured several enthusiastic clients from Illinois with our technical capabilities and would love to explore further potential opportunities.

Reach out to us for further queries. If you have an innovative idea, please share with us and give us an opportunity to turn it into success. Write to us at info@letsnurture.com.