Innovative Business Models for the Future Smart City
Abstract
This paper examines how to outline and adopt innovative business models for the Smart Cities of the future. Smart Cities are intelligent and efficient communities and ecosystems employing digital technologies to respond a growing waste of resources, unsustainable environmental impact, and inefficiency in traditional processes. Considering the greatest benefits of Smart Cities on economies, societies, and environment, many countries have now introduced national Smart City projects in order to transform life, improve business operations and market competitiveness. However, despite growing interests towards Smart Cities, it remains still difficult to adopt this paradigm due to digital transformation, interaction strategies, social and cultural problems. Therefore, this paper aims to break down the barriers to these problems and support the literature and management to understand how to implement profitable business models for Smart Cities of the future. Specifically, we identify four main areas characterizing Smart Cities (i.e., Smart Mobility, Smart Living, Smart Energy, and Smart Public Ecosystems) where digital technologies have shown greater progress with large savings. For each area, multiple case studies have been discussed and Business Model Canvases have been developed for generalizing effective methodological approaches toward efficient implementation of Smart City paradigm. Results are threefold. As for digital transformation problems, we show how digital technologies (e.g., Cloud, IoT, Big Data and AI) are applied profitably through innovative business models; as for interaction strategies problems we indicate how to organize innovative ecosystems involving public and private actors to promote Smart Cities; as for social and cultural problems we delineate change management and communication practices useful to instill in all stakeholders a culture towards the Smart City. With these findings the paper aims at enriching scientific knowledge about the Smart City Paradigm by means of a business model perspective and to offer public administrations insightful guidelines for the transition toward Smart Cities.
Full text article
Authors
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
- The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
- Attribution: other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
With the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
- The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a pre-publication manuscript (but not the Publisher's final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
- Upon Publisher's request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author's own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
- The Author represents and warrants that:
- The Work is the Author's original work;
- The Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
- The Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
- The Work has not previously been published;
- The Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
- The Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
- The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author's breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 7 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher's use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Article Details
Accepted 2023-03-30
Published 2023-03-31