What is The Future for Cities?

145R_Smart city and simplicity? Modular business models for smart cities (research summary)

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Are you interested in how to reduce complexity of the smart city business models?

Summary of the article titled Smart city and simplicity? Modular business models for smart cities from 2020 by Sari Peratalo, Petri Ahokangas, and Saara Pekkarinen, published on the EU’s Futurium platform.

This is a great preparation to our next interviewee in episode 147, Damian Hewitt, where we talk a lot about the smart city as simplicity.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see what business models can do to reduce complexity of smart cities. This article presents the modular business model as a required approach to smart city development and implementation.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

  1. Urban governance is the moderating and influencing factor in how our society works but it is often seen as underperforming for the citizens – thus it needs improvement which can be smart city with modular approach.
  2. Modularity is building complex products and systems from smaller subsystems that can be designed independently yet function together as a whole.
  3. The modular business model approach in smart cities brings together the different knowledge pieces and skills via lowering the boundaries of urban silos.

    4. You can find the article through this link.

    Abstract: This paper discusses a modular business model approach in the public smart city context. Up to date, the implementation of smart city business models has been challenging due to the complexity and fragmentation of the created models. This study aims at contributing to research by introducing a modular and simpler business model approach for smart cities.

    Connecting episodes you might be interested in:

    • No.003 - Interview with Frans-Anton Vermast about Amsterdam's smart urban governance;
    • No.138 - Interview with Luis Natera about consciously choosing where to live;

      • You can find the transcript through this link.

      What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available.

      I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.

      Music by Lesfm from Pixabay

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      What is The Future for Cities?By Fanni Melles