Business Models of Public Smart Services for Sustainable Development

Objective: Business Model Innovation approaches in service business model context are not adequately studied in the extant literature and there is a clear need for extension of different business model typologies for innovating service business models. Principal aim of this study is to explore how service business model archetypes can be explained as a business model representation such as Business Model Canvas, particularly what the term managed services really mean. Also, it is intended to add clarity to current business model innovation approaches in providing managed services, especially business process services in a service value chain. This will prompt further research to address related implications of networked business model setup and information technology as an enabler in managed services context. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Established framework of Business Model Canvas from extant literature and recent trends in business model representations that cover digitally enabled service business models are compared and contrasted. In line with service dominant logic, approaches for management and optimization of key resources and key activities are used as basis of stacking up different service business model archetypes. Service value chain and network business model implications are emphasized for further differentiating the innovation approaches in managed services business models. Findings: Among various business model design tools and representations, service business models can be better represented as a business model canvas with special emphasis on how key resources and key activities are managed and optimized in a service value chain. Digital enablement with the use of IT and/or cloud infrastructure shall act as accelerators for effective business model innovation in service context. Service business models shall be categorized as a stack of service offerings such as outsourced services, resource outsourcing, professional services, BPO/ITeS, managed services and Business Process As A service (BPaaS). services currently mean to only manage IT services but there is new paradigm of Managed Business Services which is emerging. Applications/Improvements: Suggested findings of this paper and the identification of broad types of service offerings, which clearly differentiate managed services from other service models, can be applied in practice. This approach shall bring in more consensuses about understanding of managed services business models among practitioners and researchers.

Most cities have adopted smart city services to solve urban problems. However, an examination of their operations reveals that many of these services have either been discontinued or have failed to advance further since they were not profitable. Therefore, this study reviews and proposes the business models of smart city services at a fundamental level. It defines and classifies the smart city service focusing on transportation and the components. The business model has been constructed for electric vehicles and autonomous shuttle businesses in terms of transportation services. It found that the model was profitable in each business only when various stakeholders were linked for mutual interests. Since various service stakeholders cooperate in smart city service, if one of them is unable to secure profitability, it is difficult to operate the smart city service fully. Therefore, a detailed review of the business model is required before providing a smart city service.

The goal of providing smart city services is not only simply building smart technology and infrastructure but also improving the quality of life of citizens who use smart city services and have positive experiences. This requires establishing service supply strategies considering citizens’ satisfaction levels by identifying the factors that affect the will or behavior of citizens who use smart city services. However, decision making regarding smart city policies and service supply in Korea is conducted through the central government-centered top-down mode, which lacks the consideration of how to improve citizens’ satisfaction levels or their intention to use technology. Thus, we proposed an acceptance model for smart city services, which is a theoretical model that offers a foundation for a model to evaluate the interaction levels of citizens toward smart city services based on the technology acceptance model, which is the most widely used tool to evaluate what factors affect the acceptance and use of information technology and system-based services. In addition, we defined research models by discussing previous studies that proposed factors that affect the acceptance of smart city and U-City services and urban public services. To empirically verify the research models proposed herein, we surveyed citizens in Seoul and conducted structural equation modeling using AMOS 28. As a result, we derived a total of eight factors (Quality, User Characteristics, Positive Attitude, Perceived Risk, Social Influence, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Usefulness, and Acceptance Intention) that affected the acceptance of smart city services and 42 assessment items from these factors. The results of this study are expected to be foundational data for establishing policies and systems for the improvement of citizens’ interaction level and continuous use of smart city services.

With the promotion and application of information technology, smart cities based on artificial intelligence have become the best choice for the government to solve urban problems, connect urban citizens, and provide quality public services. From the initial information city and digital city to the current smart city, the construction of smart cities has undergone profound changes with five major characteristics: big data, intelligence, innovation, interaction, and integration, and Internet giants have emerged in the field of public services in smart cities. Internet giants are emerging in the construction of public service platforms for smart cities, and traditional smart city construction enterprises are also expanding various forms of urban operation services through the form of “Internet+“. Nevertheless, there is still a gap between the quantity and quality of China's smart cities compared with developed countries, and there is a need to build a number of pilot smart cities characterized by the linkage of artificial intelligence technology and public services, easy to promote, and sustainable development. The smart city construction model with public services as the core has research value and has the possibility of becoming the mainstream development in the future. Therefore, exploring the organic combination of AI technology and urban public services is the key to answer whether AI technology can promote the improvement of urban public services.

Smart cities have rapidly become a hot topic within technology communities, and promise both improved delivery of services to end users and reduced environmental impact in an era of unprecedented urbanization. Both large hightech companies and grassroots citizen-led initiatives have begun exploring the potential of these technologies. Significant barriers remain to the successful rollout and deployment of business models outlined for smart city applications and services, however. Most of these barriers pertain to an ongoing battle between two main schools of thought for system architecture, ICT and telecommunications, proposed for data management and service creation. Both of these system architectures represent a certain type of value chain and the legacy perspective of the respective players that wish to enter the smart city arena. Smart cities services, however, utilize components of both the ICT industry and mobile telecommunications industries, and do not benefit from the current binary perspective of system architecture. The business models suggested for the development of smart cities require a longterm strategic view of system architecture evolution. This article discusses the architectural evolution required to ensure that the rollout and deployment of smart city technologies is smooth through acknowledging and integrating the strengths of both the system architectures proposed.

This chapter discusses the preconditions for the development of public smart city services by grounding their design on service-dominant logic. The aim is to pinpoint the critical aspects of the service-dominant approach in the public sector context and smart city development, and on that basis provide an analytical picture of how the instances of smart city development can potentially enhance the ability of public organizations to create public value within service-dominant logic. Methodologically, we rely on an ontological analysis that clarifies the core components of both service-dominant logic and the smart city concept. Our findings show that critical intersecting areas, which are vital in utilizing smart city tools in service-dominant logic-oriented public service development, include people’s involvement, knowledge function, smart services, and the service ecosystem. We assert that service design should be based on mechanisms that facilitate resource integration and user involvement within service ecosystems rather than on stand-alone solutions. Cyber-physical systems have a key role in such a process, especially regarding information-intensive services. The development of cyber-physical systems for public services at the core of the public service ecosystem provides a strategic tool for service transformation that opens up a horizon for a major advance in value co-creation in the public domain.

This study is focused on co-creation of public services in the smart city from an open innovation management perspective. Drawing on both literature and empirical data from four smart city projects in Europe, it discusses the context of collaborative service creation (cocreation) requiring public service providers to engage with the citizens in the whole life cycle of service delivery (co-production). An integrated conceptual approach to co-production is adopted in order to understand how public service providers and users can co-create both individual and public value through their interaction in co-producing the services people appreciate and need, to impact on citizen and communal welfare. In particular, the sets of skills necessary for co-producing smart city services effectively are identified, allowing public service providers to gather the necessary user insight and their operational processes and to identify appropriate management approaches for delivering effective high quality urban services. Research is based on experience gained from SmartiP, a European multidisciplinary project focused on the co-production of citizens-centered internet-enabled services in the public sector. The use made by public service managers of a bespoke Self-Assessment Toolkit is analysed to identify what they prioritised when reporting their experiences of co-production. The results suggest that service managers need not only the capacity and skills for managing co-creation activities but for employing a governance structure that encourages collaboration between the multiplicities of stakeholders involved in the smart city open innovation eco-system. The findings can be used by both scholars and city administrations and public servants concerned with smart city services to drive co-creation activities and to redefine relevant operating processes to ensure sustainable value co-creation.

Due to lack of experience of companies with digital business models, agricultural machinery manufacturers and agricultural service companies are facing a positioning problem in their ecosystem. Smart services are getting more important for these companies and they have issues to define a matching business model for their newly developed smart services. The lack of a framework for smart service business models makes it even harder for companies to successfully develop new services. This paper contributes to a better understanding of business models for smart services and establishes a common morphological framework to define different types of business models for smart services. Six types of business models of industrial smart services were identified during the research based, which was based on a literature review and interviews with leading experts in the field of smart services. The validation of the developed types and its practical application was carried out as part of the German research project Smart-Farming-World and its four developed use cases. This paper gives a detailed description of the application of the framework on the use case nPotato.

New technologies open up the door to multiple business models applied to public services in smart cities. However, there is not a commonly adopted methodology for evaluating business models in smart cities that can help both practitioners and researchers to choose the best option. This paper addresses this gap introducing the Business Model Evaluation Tool for Smart Cities. This methodology is a simple, organized, flexible and the transparent system that facilitates the work of the evaluators of potential business models. It is useful to compare two or more business models and take strategic decisions promptly. The method is part of a previous process of content analysis and it is based on the widely utilized Business Model Canvas. The evaluation method has been assessed by 11 experts and, subsequently it has been validated applying it to the case studies of Santander’s waste management and street lighting systems, which take advantage of innovative technologies commonly used in smart cities.

The digitalization of the power grid to smart grid provides value added services to the prosumers and other stakeholders involved in the energy market, and possibly disrupts existing electricity services in smart cities. The use of Electric Vehicles (EVs) do not only challenge the sustainability of the smart grid but also promote and stimulate its upgrading. Undeniably, EVs can actively promote the development of the smart grid via two-way communications by deploying Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and Grid-to-Vehicle (G2V). EVs have environmental benefits as compared to hybrids or even internal combustion engine vehicle as they can help minimize noise levels, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. The integration of EVs could bring substantial changes for the society not only in providing transportation services but also shifting economies from petroleum and reducing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from the transportation sector. Therefore, this study employs secondary data from the literature to explore how EVs can achieve sustainable energy as a service business model in smart cities. Findings from this study suggest that EVs are major assets for a sustainable energy future as EV batteries offers an untapped opportunity to store electricity from renewable energy sources. Implications from this study discusses the issues and recommendations for EVs integration in smart cities.

Smart city applications and services are increasingly considered as strategic means to cope with emerging global challenges such as climate change, pollution, the ageing population, and energy shortage. In particular, smart parking is a type of smart services used to improve traffic congestion and pollution within cities. Nevertheless, although smart city services are driven by advanced information technologies, their success is highly dependent on user engagement, which is historically problematic. This paper presents and discusses the results of a case study on the smart parking service in London. A questionnaire (involved a total of 212 local drivers) was adopted as the main data collection method. This was complemented by the collection and analysis of 470 online user comments left for the service. The results showed that London’s smart parking service may potentially help each driver to save an average of £68 (62.2 l) on petrol annually and reduce CO2 emissions by 238.14 kg per car per year. At city level, a smart parking system could help London save £183.6 million worth of petrol per year and reduce its annual CO2 emissions by 642,978 tons. However, public awareness, actual usage, and user satisfaction of this smart service are currently very low. These present substantial barriers to realise the potential economic and environmental benefits of the service. This paper concluded that further to the very technological efforts, local authorities and service providers need to make a stronger endeavour to enhance public engagement and user satisfaction towards smart services, in order to realise the promises of such solutions.

Dimensions, working areas, and characteristics of smart cities have been widely reviewed and identified. However, the review needs to be mapped out further based on resource management and city services. City resources as enablers, advocates, and transformers are managed to realize city smart(er). In realizing smart(er) cities, the government needs to prioritize urban services mapped in the dimensions of smart cities. Management of city resources and services needs to be analyzed the characteristics, making it easier for the government to understand the concept of smart cities. The paper aims to review and map the city resources and services with their various characteristics based on the existing smart city model/framework. The paper is based on a review the literature from 2007–2017 to analyze the dimensions, working areas, and characteristics of smart city models/frameworks. As a result, smart city resources that can be managed including the suprastructure, infrastructure, and infostructure; and smart city services that can be prioritized covering the economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and governance.

Many firms redesign their business models to be service-oriented in light of the increasingly central role that services play in their businesses and strategies. Two fundamental questions should be addressed in designing service-oriented business models: “how is value created for and with the customers by the service provider?” and, “how is the value captured by the service provider?” The first question deals with “value creation” while the second addresses “value capture” – both of which are important facets of any business model. Thus, we suggest that a service-oriented business model that addresses these two questions can sustain the viability and competitiveness of the firm as a service provider. The extant research mainly focuses on the service design from the value creation perspective. Thereby, service providers’ value capture and its trade off with value created for and with service customers have been inadequately addressed. In this paper, adopting a holistic perspective, we introduce a modeling framework that can assist in understanding, analysis and design of value (i.e. value creation and capture and their interplay) in service-oriented business models. Our modeling framework consists of a set of conceptualizations and a graphical representation. The conceptualizations are derived from insights of the extant theories, constructs and frameworks on value creation and capture in business and service-oriented business models. We illustrate the applicability of our framework by conducting a descriptive case study of the value creation and capture in Amazon’s business model in the period between 1997 and 2001.

Analysis and assessment of a knowledge based smart city architecture providing service APIs

This study examines motivations, definitions, methods and challenges of evaluating the social impacts of smart city technologies and services. It outlines concepts of social impact assessment and discusses how social impact has been included in smart city evaluation frameworks. Thematic analysis is used to investigate how social impact is addressed in eight smart city projects that prioritise human-centred design across a variety of contexts and development phases, from design research and prototyping to completed and speculative projects. These projects are notable for their emphasis on human, organisational and natural stakeholders; inclusion, participation and empowerment; new methods of citizen engagement; and relationships between sustainability and social impact. At the same time, there are gaps in the evaluation of social impact in both the smart city indexes and the eight projects. Based on our analysis, we contend that more coherent, consistent and analytical approaches are needed to build narratives of change and to comprehend impacts before, during and after smart city projects. We propose criteria for social impact evaluation in smart cities and identify new directions for research. This is of interest for smart city developers, researchers, funders and policymakers establishing protocols and frameworks for evaluation, particularly as smart city concepts and complex technologies evolve in the context of equitable and sustainable development.