Open innovation evaluation for Internet-enabled services in smart cities

This article is focused on public service innovation from an innovation management perspective. It presents research experience gained from a European project for managing social and technological innovation in the production and evaluation of demand-driven internet-enabled services in the public sector. It is based on 5 pilot initiatives, which sought to operationalise a new approach to co-producing and co-evaluating civic services in smart cities – commonly referred to as open innovation for smart city services. Research suggests that the evidence base underpinning this approach is not sufficiently robust to support claims being made about its effectiveness. Instead evaluation research of demand-driven internet-enabled urban services is in its infancy and there are no tested methods or tools in the literature for effectively supporting this approach. The paper reports on the development and trialling of a Co-evaluation Framework, indicators and reporting categories, used to support the co-production of citizens-driven smart city services in an EU-funded project. Our point of departure is that innovation of services is a sub-set of innovation management that requires effective integration of technological with social innovation, supported by the right skills and capacities. The main skills sets needed for effective co-evaluation of open innovation services are the integration of stakeholder management with evaluation capacities.