The role of universities in the knowledge management of smart city projects

Lorenzo Ardito, Alberto Ferraris, Antonio Messeni Petruzzelli, Stefano Bresciani and Manlio Del Giudice

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2019, vol. 142, issue C, 312-321

Abstract: The development of smart cities is becoming more and more based on knowledge management (KM) frameworks. This leads to new managerial challenges, which reflect the complexity of KM governance and processes issues of smart city projects as well as the need to manage knowledge that originates both within and beyond projects' boundaries. However, in-depth research on the development of smart cities from a managerial and KM perspective has remained scant. In detail, although universities are deemed to be responsible for the competitiveness and superiority of knowledge-based ecosystems, like smart city projects, the different roles they play in such projects when dealing with KM governance and processes issues are still understudied. Therefore, by conducting an exploratory case study of 20 smart city projects, this paper aims to scrutinize how universities manage the KM governance issue when internal knowledge is used, the KM governance issue when external knowledge is used, the KM processes issue when internal knowledge is used, and the KM processes issue when external knowledge is used. Results reveal that universities act as knowledge intermediaries, knowledge gatekeepers, knowledge providers, and knowledge evaluators.

Keywords: Smart city; Knowledge management; Open innovation; Universities; Knowledge-based urban development; Innovation ecosystem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162517317754
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:142:y:2019:i:c:p:312-321

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2018.07.030

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().