The role of universities in the Smart City innovation: Multistakeholder integration and engagement perspectives

Abstract

During the past decades cities may have finally shaped the demand for “smart” and sustainable innovations calling for deep stakeholders' integration and engagement within Smart City Projects (SCPs). In this context, Universities are often involved with different tasks, but their stakeholder engagement and integrator role is still unclear. This paper aims to fulfill this gap on the role of Universities in SCPs utilising bottom-up collected quantitative and qualitative data. We found positive trend in University integrator role applying a mixed two-step methodology based on online survey of University students and interviews with decision-making stakeholders involved in SCPs (business, state, entrepreneurs and academia) in Italy and Russia. Our findings suggest significant new insights useful to reapply the mediating role of Universities and to highlight some newly arising opportunities in stakeholder engagement. At the same time, we propose related practical implications in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation defining further directions under the lens of multistakeholder management. © 2018 Elsevier Inc.