Cities Should Follow the iPhone Model

AS WITH THE SMARTPHONE, THE SUCCESS OF SMART CITIES IS PREDICATED NOT ON THE AMOUNT OF SERVICES PROVIDED, BUT IN THEIR BEING PLATFORMS FOR ECOSYSTEMS OF INNOVATION

by Carmelo Cennamo
Translated by Alex Foti


When we think of smart cities, our mind goes to digital services such as carsharing, bikesharing and other smart technologies; but not to the architecture of these services, which is how they are connected to one another. And when we vote for our mayors, we almost never wonder what will be the governance model that should implement a political program. Yet, it is precisely how services are governed that makes a city more or less smart, as highlighted by a recent study.

Moreover, if we think about the iPhone, it was the way in which Apple  managed to connect the phone's capabilities to contents and services offered by third parties via apps that made Apple's phone smarter than other smartphones. The cellphone became a smartphone when it was transformed from simple product into service platform.
 
➜ the city as service-generating platform
Cities are experiencing a process similar to that of smartphones, surpassing the old model based on procurement and direct provision of services, and becoming platforms for the innovation and co-generation of services. This not only helps solving specific problems, but also creates new business opportunities in urban areas.

The city is an ecosystem of ecosystems; a complex system of relationships and cross-dependencies between citizens and co-evolving micro-systems of services – transport, food, energy, economic and socio-cultural services. In governing these ecosystems, smart cities are mainly adopting two models: the extended enterprise model, working as assemblers of solutions, ultimately responsible for the integration and delivery of services to citizens, and the market platform model, facilitating innovation and co-creation of services by third parties. It is this latter model that holds more potential.

From open data initiatives for the development of apps and digital services by private actors, to innovation facilities such as fab labs, public incubators and co-working spaces, to encourage the participation and involvement of developers, artists, makers, entrepreneurs, and even universities, the creation of ad hoc agencies for collaboration in the promotion of business opportunities, such as World business Chicago, London & Partners, Cluster Vienna, the cities analyzed in the study published in the California Management Review are increasingly adopting the market platform model to facilitate access to and participation in the whole ecosystem of innovation.
 
➜ the role of municipalities
These are however tentative models, not free from tensions. Municipalities remain bureaucratic structures devoted to the centralized and direct supply of public services, something which is difficult to reconcile with the platform market model needed to foster and coordinate innovation ecosystems.

Tensions therefore arise between the demands of citizens and actors in various ecosystems, and institutional entities that manage the macro-level infrastructure. Tensions that become exacerbated when the old practices of the standard model are applied to the new environment, thus lacking connection mechanisms, mobilization and alignment of objectives that can feed the invisible network of collaborations that is typical of innovation ecosystems.
 
➜ smarter places
Cities still can adopt digital technologies, even without the creation of new relational and collaborative structures that go beyond the public-private partnership model and create incentives for operators in various sectors to exchange data and collaborate to innovate in the solutions to public needs.  But this does not necessarily make them smarter. The evolution towards the smart city requires an evolution in the organizational model, from the direct provision of services to city platform for the promotion and coordination of ecosystems in service innovation.