The cities of the future: Hybrid alliances for open innovation projects

Cities of the future have to be 'smart'. In this regard, the open innovation model seems to provide efficient support for the involvement of private firms in public collaborations, by ensuring that there is efficiency and affordability in the delivery of new and 'smart' city services. This inquiry aims to fill a gap in the main field of research: only a very few studies have tried to analyse the challenges encountered, and the strategies followed, by firms developing open innovation strategies with public partners in Smart City Projects (SCPs). In trying to fill this gap, exploratory and qualitative analysis was performed on the decision-making processes of multinational companies participating in SCPs. This study uses a multiple-case research method, based on 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews with the smart city managers of seven large multinational companies. With reference to and in line with these cases, interesting predictions emerge relating to public-private collaborations and the creation of different forms of explorative and exploitative project alliances in cities. In particular, companies that develop alliances with public partners consider the open innovation model to be a testbed for future technologies and the development of products and services, by supporting positive knowledge spill-overs that reduce the technological gap between the private and the public sector and − at the same time − stimulating the development of a smart city ecosystem when firms are looking for the cross-fertilization of ideas. The research sheds light on public-private partnerships and the open innovation approach in a new and complex context, that of the smart city, reframing managerial debates concerning innovation-driven collaborations between the private and the public sector.