Reinterpreting governance in smart cities: An ecosystem-based view

The chapter rereads the Italian municipality of Trento as a smart city through the lens of ecosystems. The ecosystem-based view allows to identify different technologies, resources, and value cocreation practices that arise from actors’ engagement with the (smart) city (space). If adequately harmonized by governance, these variables prove consequential for the codevelopment of sustainable innovation in smart city space. To this end, case-study methodology is adopted to explore TrentoSmartCity, including content analysis based on secondary data collected from the Trento official website and social networking sites. The findings enable the development of a theoretical framework that reveals the main drivers for sustainable innovation and shows the need to introduce a metalevel to address the harmonizing role of governance. The identification of the main governance steps for the (co)development of innovation can help scholars and practitioners to shed light on the key role of managerial and governance skills (human component) in the successful exploitation of the innovation opportunities offered by technologies.