Guiding visions of corporate smart city innovators: Identifying opportunities for participatory futuring

Marjoleine G. van der Meij; Aafke Fraaije; J. E.W. Broerse; Frank Kupper

doi:10.1016/j.futures.2023.103269

Guiding visions of corporate smart city innovators: Identifying opportunities for participatory futuring

Marjoleine G. van der Meij^*, Aafke Fraaije, J. E.W. Broerse, Frank Kupper

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Since the smart city vision increasingly shapes our urban life globally, it becomes ever more urgent to integrate participatory futuring in ongoing smart city-related technology development. This study aimed to find starting points for such integration by unraveling the ‘guiding visions’ of corporate technological innovators in the smart mobility and transport sector around Amsterdam. We conducted and analyzed interviews with innovators from 12 smart city start-ups and scale-ups based on three elements of guiding visions: (1) the desired future city, (2) the purposes of technologies they expect to fulfill, and (3) how technologies are thought to relate to their wider societal context. The interviewed innovators appeared to envision a clean, frictionless future city, whereby smart city technologies fulfilled four purposes: catalyzing efficiency, nudging citizens, customizing user experiences, and connecting places and people. Innovators’ ambitions for societal participation were modest and mainly aimed at end-users to optimize design features. Overall, the innovators’ guiding visions highlight the need for participatory futuring approaches that appeal to innovators’ motivation to make a social contribution, but also help them to widen and deepen their understanding of the public values that citizens perceive to be at stake in the smart city.

Original language	English
Article number	103269
Pages (from-to)	1-12
Number of pages	12
Journal	Futures
Volume	154
Early online date	16 Oct 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103269
Publication status	Published - Dec 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank the Amsterdam Smart City (ASC) foundation for its support in reaching out to its network of tech start-ups, scale-ups, and associated professionals, to recruit interviewees. The interviews conducted for this study were made possible by the Dutch Research Council Knowledge Innovation Mapping fund (NWO-KIEM) for the project Co-creatief & Reflexief Ontwerpproces voor het Societal Interface Lab, grant number 314–98-088 . We thank NEMO Science Museum (Amsterdam), partner in that project, for organizing participatory smart city futuring events based on (preliminary) outcomes of this study. ASC, NEMO and NWO had neither influence on nor involvement in the data analysis, interpretation or the writing of this publication.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors

Keywords

Guiding visions
Participatory futuring
Smart Cities
Smart city innovators
Technology development

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title = "Guiding visions of corporate smart city innovators: Identifying opportunities for participatory futuring",

abstract = "Since the smart city vision increasingly shapes our urban life globally, it becomes ever more urgent to integrate participatory futuring in ongoing smart city-related technology development. This study aimed to find starting points for such integration by unraveling the {\textquoteleft}guiding visions{\textquoteright} of corporate technological innovators in the smart mobility and transport sector around Amsterdam. We conducted and analyzed interviews with innovators from 12 smart city start-ups and scale-ups based on three elements of guiding visions: (1) the desired future city, (2) the purposes of technologies they expect to fulfill, and (3) how technologies are thought to relate to their wider societal context. The interviewed innovators appeared to envision a clean, frictionless future city, whereby smart city technologies fulfilled four purposes: catalyzing efficiency, nudging citizens, customizing user experiences, and connecting places and people. Innovators{\textquoteright} ambitions for societal participation were modest and mainly aimed at end-users to optimize design features. Overall, the innovators{\textquoteright} guiding visions highlight the need for participatory futuring approaches that appeal to innovators{\textquoteright} motivation to make a social contribution, but also help them to widen and deepen their understanding of the public values that citizens perceive to be at stake in the smart city.",

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author = "{van der Meij}, {Marjoleine G.} and Aafke Fraaije and Broerse, {J. E.W.} and Frank Kupper",

note = "Funding Information: We thank the Amsterdam Smart City (ASC) foundation for its support in reaching out to its network of tech start-ups, scale-ups, and associated professionals, to recruit interviewees. The interviews conducted for this study were made possible by the Dutch Research Council Knowledge Innovation Mapping fund (NWO-KIEM) for the project Co-creatief & Reflexief Ontwerpproces voor het Societal Interface Lab, grant number 314–98-088 . We thank NEMO Science Museum (Amsterdam), partner in that project, for organizing participatory smart city futuring events based on (preliminary) outcomes of this study. ASC, NEMO and NWO had neither influence on nor involvement in the data analysis, interpretation or the writing of this publication. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 The Authors",

year = "2023",

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AU - Kupper, Frank

N1 - Funding Information: We thank the Amsterdam Smart City (ASC) foundation for its support in reaching out to its network of tech start-ups, scale-ups, and associated professionals, to recruit interviewees. The interviews conducted for this study were made possible by the Dutch Research Council Knowledge Innovation Mapping fund (NWO-KIEM) for the project Co-creatief & Reflexief Ontwerpproces voor het Societal Interface Lab, grant number 314–98-088 . We thank NEMO Science Museum (Amsterdam), partner in that project, for organizing participatory smart city futuring events based on (preliminary) outcomes of this study. ASC, NEMO and NWO had neither influence on nor involvement in the data analysis, interpretation or the writing of this publication. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors

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N2 - Since the smart city vision increasingly shapes our urban life globally, it becomes ever more urgent to integrate participatory futuring in ongoing smart city-related technology development. This study aimed to find starting points for such integration by unraveling the ‘guiding visions’ of corporate technological innovators in the smart mobility and transport sector around Amsterdam. We conducted and analyzed interviews with innovators from 12 smart city start-ups and scale-ups based on three elements of guiding visions: (1) the desired future city, (2) the purposes of technologies they expect to fulfill, and (3) how technologies are thought to relate to their wider societal context. The interviewed innovators appeared to envision a clean, frictionless future city, whereby smart city technologies fulfilled four purposes: catalyzing efficiency, nudging citizens, customizing user experiences, and connecting places and people. Innovators’ ambitions for societal participation were modest and mainly aimed at end-users to optimize design features. Overall, the innovators’ guiding visions highlight the need for participatory futuring approaches that appeal to innovators’ motivation to make a social contribution, but also help them to widen and deepen their understanding of the public values that citizens perceive to be at stake in the smart city.

AB - Since the smart city vision increasingly shapes our urban life globally, it becomes ever more urgent to integrate participatory futuring in ongoing smart city-related technology development. This study aimed to find starting points for such integration by unraveling the ‘guiding visions’ of corporate technological innovators in the smart mobility and transport sector around Amsterdam. We conducted and analyzed interviews with innovators from 12 smart city start-ups and scale-ups based on three elements of guiding visions: (1) the desired future city, (2) the purposes of technologies they expect to fulfill, and (3) how technologies are thought to relate to their wider societal context. The interviewed innovators appeared to envision a clean, frictionless future city, whereby smart city technologies fulfilled four purposes: catalyzing efficiency, nudging citizens, customizing user experiences, and connecting places and people. Innovators’ ambitions for societal participation were modest and mainly aimed at end-users to optimize design features. Overall, the innovators’ guiding visions highlight the need for participatory futuring approaches that appeal to innovators’ motivation to make a social contribution, but also help them to widen and deepen their understanding of the public values that citizens perceive to be at stake in the smart city.

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Guiding visions of corporate smart city innovators: Identifying opportunities for participatory futuring

Abstract

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Keywords

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Creating room for citizen perspectives in ‘smart city’ Amsterdam through interactive theatre

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