The focus in this ‘White Paper on Smart Cities as Innovation Ecosystems‘ is in the challenge of how to redefine the Smart City as an environment of innovation, empowerment and participation of citizens, businesses and other stakeholders in shaping their future, through the choices they have and decisions they make.
The focus in this ‘White Paper on Smart Cities as Innovation Ecosystems‘ is in the challenge of how to redefine the Smart City as an environment of innovation, empowerment and participation of citizens, businesses and other stakeholders in shaping their future, through the choices they have and decisions they make.
This document also discusses how European cities are currently developing g strategies towards becoming “smarter cities” and the lessons we can draw for the future. Such strategies are based on an assessment of the future need of cities and innovative usages of ICTs embodied in the broadband Internet and Internet-based app plications now and foreseen for the future. These strategies are also based on a new understanding of innovation, grounded in the concept of open innovation ecosystems, global innovation chains, and on citizens’ empowerment for shaping innovation and urban development.
Partly these strategies include the development of new types of innovation in urban areas. These new ways of innovation are characterized, firstly, by a high level of citizen involvement in co-creating Internet-based applications and services in all sectors s of the economy and society; secondly, by the emergence of new forms of collaboration among g local governments, research institutes, universities s, citizens and businesses (e.g. Public-Private-People Partnerships). Such strategies and the resulting in urban “innovation ecosystems” are becoming increasingly relevant given the urgent need to tackle growing social, economic and societal issues that cities are currently facing.
Several case studies of European cities (Lisbon, Helsinki, Manchester, Barcelona, Thessaloniki, Oulu) aim to analyze the currently emerging strategies, policies and technological opportunities, to identify how the opportunities of ICTs and the future Internet are being explored, and how these can be realized in the future driving the socio-economic development of urban a areas. The cases also address how cities are redefining their innovation policies and how they are starting to experiment on citizens’ involvement within the context of open innovation.
This White Paper was produced in the framework of the FIREBALL-project funded by the European Commission, Coordination Action within the 7th Framework Programme for ICT, running in th he period 2010-2012. The aim of this project is to bring together communities and stakeholders who are active in three areas, namely: research and experimentation on the Future Internet (FIRE); o open and user-driven innovation (Living Labs); and urban development.
The goal is to develop a common vision and a common view on how the different approaches, methodologies, policies and viewpoints in these areas can be aligned to boost innovation and socio-economic development of cities. The underlying view of FIREBALL is that cities constitute innovation playgrounds, hence, may act as “agents of change”. Open innovation and citizens’ engagement aim to bridge the gap b between the R&D of Internet technologies and actually experimenting and using Internet-based applications in cities.