As Google gets ready to launch its gigabit network, Kansas City asks: Now what?

After getting picked for Google Fiber, Kansas City (Kansas and Missouri) is grappling with a far more complex challenge: What to do with it?

In the most optimistic scenarios, Google Fiber -- which will be one of the world's fastest broadband networks with speeds of 1 gigabit, more than 100 times as fast as the average broadband connection -- has the potential to make the two Kansas Cities the most entrepreneurial place in the world, the center of a health care revolution, and a leader in education reform. But along with frustration over delays in the launch, the project has also bred anxiety that it will widen the digital divide or overwhelm the cities with a flood of new high-tech immigrants who drive up the cost of living. Perhaps the greatest fear, though, is that Google Fiber will change nothing, that somehow the two cities will squander this moment, when the eyes of the world are watching, to invent the future. Google hopes the project will spur efforts to find ways to bring more people online, as well as to build such networks across the country. Kansas City understands that if that happens, then the window in which the cities have an advantage over the rest of the world could close quickly.

"This is the question that keeps me up every night," said Cameron Cushman, manager in the entrepreneurship program at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, one of the cities' largest philanthropic organizations. "Great, we're going to have an advantage on every other city in the world. Now, how do we make Kansas City the most entrepreneurial place in the world?"