The growing expectations to public services and the pervasiveness of wicked problems in times characterized by growing fiscal constraints call for the enhancement of public innovation, and new research suggests that multi-actor collaboration in networks and Collaborative innovation and the snake in paradiseUntil recently, 'public innovation' was considered as an oxymoron. Fortunately, new research has demolished the longstanding myth that juxtaposes an innovative and dynamic private sector with an ossified public sector trapped in red tape, lack of incentives and centralized control (Mazzucato, 2013). The public sector is much more

Network managers engage in several day-today activities, including bridging, networking, and stabilizing relationships. Still, when should they opt for one activity or another? Our study shows that this choice needs to be taken in combination with certain network characteristics, such as network development stage, connectivity, and trust. It sheds light on four different combinations of activities and network characteristics that are simultaneously able to lead to perceived high network performance. It also suggests three approaches to network management in networks that differ in their development stage, connectivity and trust: stabilize, stabilize and connect, stabilize and develop.

Just as private organizations rely on dynamic capabilities to sustain their innovative capacity and competitive advantage, the public sector may resort to them to improve its ability to address citizens’ needs. But how do innovation and organizational capabilities interact in a public setting? This analysis of the Congestion Charge Zone implemented by the Municipality of Milan in Italy explores this issue, and highlights the role played by interorganizational and cross-sector collaborative innovation. Results show that multi-actor engagement within a multilevel collaborative environment enhances the system’s ability to understand the problems to be addressed, to create and implement appropriate solutions, and to foster ownership of the innovation. They confirm that sharing knowledge and engaging in interorganizational learning are central to the development of innovation; however, they also highlight that these dynamics strengthen collective capabilities at the organizational and system’s level, thereby producing a reinforcing effect on innovative capacities at both levels. Based on these findings, a framework for continuous public innovation through collaboration is proposed which, first, provides a tool for mapping the factors and dynamics that shape collaborative innovation in a public setting and, second, explains how the process of collaborative innovation fosters organizational dynamic capabilities that, in turn, sustain the organizations’ capacity to innovate in the longer run.

This paper contributes to the literature on social sustainability in urban governance, with a focus on how this concept may be integrated into a Smart City strategy, so that excessive enthusiasm for smart technologies does not lead to neglect of the social implications of certain policies or programmes. By relying on a case study-based analysis, this work explores the path followed by the municipal government of Milan, and shows that integration of social sustainability into the Smart City strategy can be pursued by focusing both on the ‘content’ and the ‘process’ of strategy building. Rather than playing a strong leadership role, the planning department on the internal front and the entire municipality on the external front have chosen a role based on co-creation with citizens and other relevant stakeholders. The benefits of this approach may include the bottom-up character of several projects, better responsiveness and greater opportunities for different categories of actors; the drawbacks may include greater difficulty in ensuring that certain objective are reached (e.g. in terms of fairness and representativeness) and a higher risk of the dispersion of resources. This case also points to the difficulty of assessing the social sustainability of multiple rather than individual projects and programmes combined in a Smart City strategy: projects may reinforce each other in their social impact, or otherwise hinder possible benefits; also, a municipality may choose a combination of smart projects and programmes that attach different weights to economic, environmental and social sustainability objectives.

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