Evaluating effectiveness of open innovation in smart city services from innovation management perspective

This article is focused on the evaluation of public services from an open innovation management perspective. Drawing on both literature and empirical data, the paper presents research experience gained from SmartIP, a European project for managing social and technological innovation in the production and evaluation of demand-driven internet-enabled services in the public sector. The project was based on initiatives in 5 pilot cities which applied a new approach (Living Labs) to co-producing and co-evaluating civic services in smart cities. The paper reports on the implementation of a bespoke Co-evaluation Framework and Toolkit used to support the co-production of citizens-driven smart city services. Previous work reporting the project indicated that innovation of services is a sub-set of innovation management which requires effective integration of technological with social innovation. The current paper investigates the effectiveness of employing the bespoke framework for evaluating experience from smart cities in Europe, identifying the skills sets missing for effective management open innovation in the public sector. Smart city service managers are identified as needing not only the necessary capacity and skills for co-production and co-evaluation but also the tools and a supporting environment which encourages collaboration with and between users and other stakeholders in managing prototypes and pilot projects. A set of previously made propositions are revisited about how research into the innovation of public services along with related policy and practice implications can be furthered.