Smart city intellectual capital: an emerging view of territorial systems innovation management

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how the intellectual capital (IC)\ud approach and concepts could be fruitfully adapted to study the smart city phenomenon from a\ud managerial point of view.\ud Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on a long-term, in-depth ethnographic\ud exploration of the vast global community, which is created around the smart city movement.\ud Findings – The analysis suggests that, in order to effectively analyse a smart city context through\ud the IC lens, the traditional IC framework needs to be extended for: expected outcomes, which should\ud also include sustainability, resilience and quality of life; categories of key resources, which should also\ud include institutional capital and environmental capital; units of analysis, which should also include\ud territorial systems, such as transportation or waste; and key managerial challenges implied. As a final\ud result, a smart city intellectual capital (SC-IC) framework is proposed.\ud Research limitations/implications – Most of the cases analysed in this study are European;\ud further studies are advisable to better investigate non-European smart city contexts.\ud Practical implications – The paper suggests that the knowledge management, project portfolio\ud management and network management approaches are crucial to better support managerial practices\ud in smart city organizations.\ud Originality/value – The SC-IC framework allows for a clear definition of the smart city organization,\ud as a new knowledge-based, project-oriented, network-shaped type of organization. Therefore, the SC-IC\ud framework provides smart city research with a consistent rooting in management studies. Further, this\ud paper contributes to the fourth stage of IC research

Smart Cities as Organizational Fields: A Framework for Mapping Sustainability-Enabling Configurations

“…Smart projects are often handled by single departments of the city administration, and then may suffer from the same "silos-based management" that traditionally affects bureaucratic organizations [18]. This hampers collaboration, knowledge exchange and learning [11], often resulting in wasted resources and rapid obsolescence of the smart initiatives, in sharp contrast with the smart city idea, which is based on the multidimensional and dynamic integration of innovative projects [57]. In this light, what makes an urban project smart is the collaboration across related city sub-systems, such as mobility and energy, rather than the adoption of high-tech solutions per se [58].…”

“…However, despite these impressive investments and endeavors, the results of smart city initiatives have often been partial, and in some cases, frankly disappointing [19,20]. Faced with these failures, smart city practitioners and researchers are developing a growing awareness that the traditional organizational and management approaches are poorly equipped to address the novel challenges posed by the smart city context and goals [11]. In other words, smart city initiatives suffer from the same knowledge gap that affects many other efforts to organize system-level sustainability transformations [1].…”

“…A smart city approach implies the exploitation of high technologies, and particularly information and communication technologies (ICT), to improve city resilience and quality of life, along with its economic, social and environmental sustainability [10][11][12][13]. The smart city idea has much in common with the sustainable city movement [14], but is characterized by a particular focus on technology-enabled innovation as the key means to achieve sustainability.…”

Castilla-La Mancha Cities' Competitiveness in Intellectual Capital as Compared to Other Spanish Cities

“…Thus, Leydesdorff and Deakin (2011) highlight the importance of intellectual capital in Smart Cities and Dameri and Ricciardi (2015) suggest that the intellectual capital approach might be used to study the phenomenon of Smart Cities from a management perspective. Working towards the same goal of conceptual development and based on the intellectual capital approach, this paper aims to establish a measurement tool for Smart Cities that accounts for all the relevant dimensions.…”

“…These dimensions are key but there is no consensus in the literature as to the dimensions that should be considered; Barrionuevo, Berrone, and Ricart (2012), Chourabi et al (2012), Kourtit and Nijkamp (2012), López-Ruiz et al (2014), Angelidou (2015), and Dameri and Ricciardi (2015) all propose different kinds and numbers of dimensions based on intellectual capital. A review of the most widely-cited papers has been provided by Uziene (2013), who proposes three broad dimensions: human, structural and relational, and the applied model of López-Ruiz et al (2014) and Alfaro Navarro et al (2017), who use two dimensions for the human component and five for the structural one.…”