Institutions and Innovation as Driving Forces Towards a Smart City and Sustainable Territorial Development

The aim of the chapter is the analysis of innovation and institution as key-elements for reaching a higher social welfare and for improving environmental quality. To determine a social optimum or a Pareto improvement, we consider the interaction between institution and firm in the short and in the medium/long run. Using a static comparative analysis, the interaction of these two agents, institution and market, is examined. Within the market an entrant and an incumbent firm are present, and the entrant firm radically innovates. Even if in the short run results show that the market alone is able to realize a Pareto improvement, an institution action through an innovation adoption is a preferable solution for gaining a higher social welfare equilibrium, both in the short and/or in the medium/long run. Our main results highlight that the strategic role of an innovating institution in each case considered consists in innovating towards green technology and in creating a competitive, attractive and environmentally sustainable milieu. From this point of view, technology innovation plays a central role in an economic and territorial development, orienting and optimizing the relationship between environmental and firm quality

A Framework for a Smart City Design : Digital Transformation in the Helsinki Smart City

Recently, there has been substantial interest in the concept of a smart city, as it has been a viable solution to the dilemmas created by the urbanization of cities. Digital technologies—such as Internet-of-Things, artificial intelligence, big data, and geospatial technologies—are closely associated with the concept of a smart city. By means of modern digital technologies, cities aim to optimize their performance and services. Further, cities actively endorse modern digital technologies to foster digitalization and the emergence of data-based innovations and a knowledge economy. In this paper, a framework for a smart city design is presented. The framework considers a smart city from the perspective of four dimensions—strategy, technology, governance, and stakeholders. The framework is complemented with sub-dimensions, and the purpose of this framework is to strengthen the governance and sustainability of smart city initiatives. Further, the proposed framework is applied to the Helsinki smart city, the capital of Finland. The objective is to analyse the Helsinki smart city through dimensions presented in the framework and learn how the city of Helsinki governs and implements its smart city initiativespeerReviewe