How to turn a smart idea into a smart city

As digitalisation progresses, so-called smart cities promise to enable social and technological innovations that will increase the resource efficiency of and quality of life in Swiss cities. Various towns have already launched pilot projects. However, the number of successfully implemented smart city projects is still low. As many smart city projects only have a limited impact, they are often terminated after the pilot stage and never reach the “fully scaled” stage. This project aims at accelerating the upscaling of smart city solutions. The core hypothesis of the project is that scaling issues can be tackled through an integrative strategic approach that combines user/citizen, organisational, and system-level perspectives.

Swiss cities are confronted with increasing urbanisation, climate change and digitalisation. The idea behind the smart city is to offer an integrative approach that makes it possible to meet these challenges with a comprehensive concept. However, both in research and in practice, the scaling of smart city projects is considered a major hurdle. In this project, we investigate how user involvement, new business models and the creation of new structures for an smart city sector influence the scaling of smart city solutions.

The aim of the project is to accelerate the scaling of smart city solutions and to promote smart city market development in Switzerland in order to increase innovation, efficiency, social welfare and the quality of urban life. For this purpose, the research team identified and developed strategies, tools and instruments for the scaling of smart city solutions.

The results of this project indicate that collaboration strategies and the realignment of smart city stakeholder ecosystems with innovative digital technologies are paramount. This project informs management practices and guides policymakers in creating conducive environments for digital innovation through supportive regulations and technology grants that encourage collaboration between incumbents and new entrants.

Three main messages

1. Promising smart city services often involve public-private collaborations, but public and private actors tend to differ in their operating principles and their “view of the world”. This project developed a common language and an integrative framework around business models that support the provision of public services through public-private collaboration.
2. To scale sustainable and smart city solutions, firms must embrace digital innovation and collaboration. By realigning within innovation ecosystems, companies like electric utilities and clean-tech startups can create impactful solutions, such as digital platforms and smart devices, that enhance resource efficiency and infrastructure resilience while fostering strategic partnerships for a sustainable future
3. The planned level of technical smart city implementation and integration should be accompanied by corresponding regulative and organisational development (e.g. data governance rules). Cities would like to receive more support from higher levels (i.e. cantons and federal government) and other stakeholders such as private initiatives, science and/or civil society to accelerate their (digital) transformation towards sustainable smart city development.

Scaling Smart City Projects - from Individual pilots towards a Common strategy of industry Emergence (SPICE)