Building Inclusive Smart Cities through Innovation Intermediaries

To be inclusive, smart cities should be built on Industry 4.0 technologies within a quadruple helix model involving governments, academia, industry, and citizens. Innovation intermediaries facilitating collaborative innovation could foster this model of smart city. This paper identifies digital innovation hubs (DIHs) as innovation intermediaries that can help build inclusive smart cities. A screening of DIHs in European and extra-European countries through desk research finds 48 DIHs linked to smart city projects or policies, of which 23 are involved in building inclusive smart cities and mostly addressing the areas of smart environment and government. This paper suggests a framework for boosting their functions as transformation leaders, knowledge brokers, and technical mediators to facilitate the use of Industry 4.0 technologies for building inclusive smart cities.