26th International Association for Management of Technology Conference - IAMOT 2017

In the paradigm emerging in the twenty-first century, focused on the knowledge economy, elements such as collaborative actions, conscious consuming, sustainability, health, mobility, accessibility and connectivity are main drivers. This new paradigm requires more than the industrial organization of the traditional economy, which has been pushed out to urban peripheries, in industrial districts. Cities have become service oriented and frequently chaotic living place for workers. Within this scenario, where brainwork has become the most valuable economic asset, bypassing machines and simply workforce, people are the main source for this new economy – and they are concentrated in cities. What may be seen is the migration of the economic activity guided by the creative industry instead of the manufacturing one. Rather than identifying what is needed to expand the traditional industry, the challenge now becomes to identify how to attract creative people to cities and promote its development towards the new paradigm of creative industry. Creative people seek for a place that offers high conditions for living, working and entertaining. It means more than solely presenting an attractive urban environment; it is important to stimulate the establishment of new ventures based on knowledge and creativity, and the interaction between these ventures with S&T institutions to raise up their technological base and promote innovation. The ongoing phenomenon has been carried out not only by public policies, but also by firms and individuals, which use their knowledge and creativity to find solutions to deal with the complex issues present in a city. However, it is needed more. It is required that public and private sectors get together in a governance arrangement to identify the main actions to be fulfilled, which may ensure basic conditions to attract creative people and new projects to attract creative businesses, so that these people can work on them and generate wealth through knowledge. Cities must be planned and structured to facilitate a whole innovation ecosystem in which knowledge flows smoothly. Thus, industrial cities must be transformed into smart cities, in which the state-of-the-art knowledge is applied to develop enough economic added value solutions to generate wealth and quality of life, based on existing and new resources. To become a smart city, it is required a set of new assumptions in several different dimensions to attract and retain creative and talented people. Thus, smart cities may provide the necessary infrastructure so businesses, individually or through public or private partnerships, use ICTs to create goods and services, that solve urban problems and, along with it, raise the intellectual potential of the city and its competitiveness. Instead of a city that segregates its individuals and businesses through traditional industrial structures, cities in the twenty-first century must aggregate them to promote development through smart solutions. However, are the cities ready to deal with this new paradigm? Do cities present basic conditions to develop innovation ecosystems? Therefore, this paper aims to identify the basics to promote a smart city in the XXI century. To do so, a theoretical discussion is promoted, through the review of different smart city definitions, to propose a general concept and compare the basics of industrial cities with existing smart cities initiatives. To further explore the basics of a smart city, qualitative interviews will be conducted with key actors of different dimensions, such as government, companies, S&T institutions and individuals.