| dc.description.abstract | Interdisciplinary Studies Journal, vol. 3, no 4, 2014.
With this ISJ special issue on Smart Cities Laurea, together with the European Network of LivingLabs (ENoLL), wants to support those developing their cities and regions or serving their citizens, public organizations and firms both in Europe and elsewhere. Moreover, the purpose of this ISJ number is to provide reference material for the Smart City Guidebook and extended material for the Guidebook users. The Guidebook will be published in 2014 by the World Bank and ENoLL. The contributions in this unrefereed special issue stem from both academics and practitioners in companies and public organizations both within and outside the ENoLL community.
We are delighted to present to you a wide range of research articles and practical papers discussing in details the Smart City phenomenon from different points of view and in different contexts: Some of the papers examine Living Labs related concepts, e.g. co-creation, user led service design, open innovation, augmented reality, eco-system business model or organizing pilots. In his article, Henrique Diz discusses the contradictory results related to Public-Private Partnership which is commonly recommended and also successfully used particularly in the field of Living Labs’ related research, development and innovation activities. The strength of this paper is the way it attempts to establish the differences between successful and unsuccessful public-private partnership and the outcome of these actions in various fields of civil societies.
The research articles discuss new methods and platforms, impact evaluation and wider methodological issues with perfection. Whereas a wide range of papers introduce real life Smart Region and Smart City cases in various fields such as mobility, health and social care, wellbeing, energy, remote services, land use, real estate business and management of material and human resources.
Some of the articles epitomize how important education, learning and training programs are in boosting Smart City development. This is also the experience of Laurea University of Applied Sciences, the owner of ISJ. Laurea has a continuous nine-year tenure as a Centre of Excellence as appointed by the National Evaluation Council due to its operative model (Learning by Developing, LbD) that integrates RDI with learning and regional development. The LbD model in conjunction with the LivingLab approach is based on innovation co-creation among various stakeholders within the Helsinki Metropolitan area and on an international level. It provides Laurea graduates with great employment and start-up opportunities. Moreover, due to this successful strategic choice, Laurea orchestrates both national and international RDI operations aiming at joint value creation in the Metropolitan area. | |
