The paper “Smart Specialisation 2.0: Driving Public Funds Towards Platforms and Ecosystems’ by Christina Kakderi, Nicos Komninos, Anastasia Panori and Artemis Psaltoglou, negotiates two main questions of the methodology of Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) in Smart Specialisation. The authors question EDP in terms of the granularity level of detail in the analysis and the assessment of dynamism of economic activities, and the collective nature of interventions and investments developed through it. They analyse existing literature and a case study in the context of Greece, as regions have to initiate a stage 2.0 of smart specialisation focusing more on interregional cooperation and good governance. The research is part of the TREnD project (Transition with Resilience for Evolutionary Development). Continue reading
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Innovation ecosystems
The Participatory Incremental Urban Planning (PIUP) Toolbox by UN-Habitat is a step-by-step methodology to assess, design, operationalize and implement urban planning processes. A roadmap is proposed to facilitate the understanding and the accomplishment of all the steps. Continue reading
According to the author, the 2020 collapse of the global economy due to Covid-19 pandemic has enabled us to think about long term trends and what the future could hold for our cities and regions, especially due to the climate agenda. Having as a starting point the current pandemic, this paper sets out the historical precedents for economic transitions after collapses that unleash new technologically based innovation waves. These are shown to be associated with different energy and infrastructure priorities and their transport and resulting urban forms. Continue reading
REFLOW is an EU H2020 project, from 2019 to 2022, that seeks to understand and transform urban material flows and to co-create and test circular and regenerative solutions in urban and peri-urban areas across Europe. The vision of REFLOW is to develop circular and regenerative cities through the re-localisation of production and the reconfiguration of material flows at different scales, leveraging Fab Labs and makerspaces as catalysts for wide-scale collaboration and co-creation conducive to systemic, sustainable change. The project operates at the international level, mobilising existing networks and movements that are working towards a new productive model for cities such as Circular Cities, C40 Cities and Fab City Global Initiative. Continue reading
Τhis research paper addresses and discusses different application areas of Internet of Things (IoT) technology in Smart Cities (SCs) and Smart Villages (SVs). Differences and similarities in both ecosystems are identified, while the authors illuminate the standardization efforts that can be applicable in both contexts.
To cover the complex sociopolitical, cultural, and economic dynamics of SCs and SVs, this research is based on the concept of digital innovation ecosystems, stressing that both contexts have their own structural socio-economic features as well as geographical distinctions. Continue reading
The present study is addressing the role of AI in the public sector and providing an overview and analysis of the use and impact of AI in Public Services. The main goal of the authors is to gather information on EU Member States’ initiatives on the use of AI in public services and develop a methodology to identify risks, opportunities, drivers and barriers.
This report is published in the context of AI Watch, the European Commission knowledge service to monitor the development, uptake and impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Europe, launched in December 2018. Continue reading
This paper analyses the dynamics of government initiated civic crowdfunding platforms, with regards to participation inequalities and their defining dimensions. Such platforms are considered by the authors as governmental responses for bottom-up peer-to-peer support mechanisms related to urban innovation, which also allows top-down governance and governmental support systems for civic entrepreneurship. Continue reading