Sustainable business model for local council’s smart city initiatives: a systematic literature review

Ezatul Faizura Mustaffa Kamal Effendee; Magiswary Dorasamy; Abdul Aziz Bin Ahmad; Azrin Aris; Saida Harguem; Maniam Kaliannan

doi:10.12688/f1000research.73373.1

Home Browse Sustainable business model for local council’s smart city initiatives:...

ALL Metrics

-

Views

-

Downloads

Get PDF

Get XML

Export

▬

✚

Systematic Review

Sustainable business model for local council’s smart city initiatives: a systematic literature review

[version 1; peer review: 1 approved with reservations]

Ezatul Faizura Mustaffa Kamal Effendee^1,2, Magiswary Dorasamy ¹, Abdul Aziz Bin Ahmad¹, Azrin Aris², Saida Harguem³, Maniam Kaliannan⁴

Ezatul Faizura Mustaffa Kamal Effendee^1,2, Magiswary Dorasamy ¹, [...] Abdul Aziz Bin Ahmad¹, Azrin Aris², Saida Harguem³, Maniam Kaliannan⁴

PUBLISHED 20 Oct 2021

Author details Author details

¹ Telekom Malaysia Bhd, Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, 60000, Malaysia
² Faculty of Management, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Selangor, 63100, Malaysia
³ Canadian University Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
⁴ University of Nottingham Malaysia, Semenyih, Selangor, 43500, Malaysia

Ezatul Faizura Mustaffa Kamal Effendee
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Magiswary Dorasamy
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Abdul Aziz Bin Ahmad
Roles: Methodology, Supervision, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Azrin Aris
Roles: Writing – Review & Editing

Saida Harguem
Roles: Writing – Review & Editing

Maniam Kaliannan
Roles: Writing – Review & Editing

OPEN PEER REVIEW

REVIEWER STATUS

This article is included in the Research Synergy Foundation gateway.

Abstract

Background: Malaysia is embarking on sustainable, resilient, and prosperous living conditions initiatives. Malaysian cities are embracing the smart city aspiration through their respective local authorities. However, they face challenges regarding funding allocation for smart city implementation. Local authorities primarily operate on a conventional business model. Based on their current business model, they are unlikely to sustain their smart city initiatives. A more financially sustainable business model is required by these local authorities to embark on smart city initiatives. This study presents a systematic review concerning the business models adopted by local authorities to implement smart cities. This paper also explores the applicability of frugal innovation towards developing a smart city business model.
Methods: This article undertakes a systematic review based on combination sets of eight main keywords: smart city, business model, frugal innovation, local authorities, performance, inclusivity, technology and success factor. The search strategy includes journal articles and conference proceedings from five major online databases: Emerald, ProQuest, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, and Springer Link between 2001-2021. The data is tabulated for clear expression of knowledge gaps.
Results: A total of 17 articles from 300 articles on smart city business models matched the search on smart city business models for local authorities . The study revealed that hardly any in-depth research providing the crucial elements for a successful smart city business model for local authorities has been conducted. No research has linked frugal innovation to smart city business models.
Conclusions: The study calls upon the research community to explore further, the possible linkage between frugal innovation and smart cities for local authorities.

Keywords

smart city, local authority, business model, frugal innovation, financial sustainability, municipality, resilience

Corresponding author: Magiswary Dorasamy

Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Grant information: The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work.

Copyright: © 2021 Mustaffa Kamal Effendee EF et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite: Mustaffa Kamal Effendee EF, Dorasamy M, Bin Ahmad AA et al. Sustainable business model for local council’s smart city initiatives: a systematic literature review [version 1; peer review: 1 approved with reservations]. F1000Research 2021, 10:1066 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.73373.1) First published: 20 Oct 2021, 10:1066 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.73373.1) Latest published: 22 Jun 2022, 10:1066 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.73373.2)

Introduction

In Malaysia, many goals have been adopted as compasses for smart city initiatives at the national and global level, such as the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda, the Twelfth Malaysia Plan, the National Physical Plan 3 and the National Urbanisation Policy 2. Malaysia currently has 150 local councils or ‘Pihak Berkuasa Tempatan’ (PBT), comprising 19 city councils, 37 municipal councils and 94 district councils.¹ Through their respective PBTs, cities around Malaysia are beginning to embrace digital city services, in line with the global movement to achieve smart and sustainable cities. However, they do not have enough funding allocated for that purpose. If they continue to operate on their conventional operations model, how can cities even hope to start embarking on the smart city aspiration when they do not have the financial means to do so? With the many challenges surrounding the financing of smart cities, practitioners and academics are exploring alternative methods. Traditional business models mainly consider how much value can contribute to the equation. However, with the increasing complexity of the smart city ecosystem, new business models must also be considered. This study contributes toward one of the 10 priority areas of the 10-10 MySTIE framework and provides insight and ways forward for smart city knowledge community.

Smart city phenomenon

The year 2007 marked a significant milestone in modern urban living, when the number of city dwellers across the world, tipped the number of those living in rural areas.² This number is not expected to slow down anytime soon, with almost two-thirds of the world’s population expected to live in urban areas by 2050.² This mass migration to the cities has inevitably strained city resources and given rise to social issues. City authorities, developers, town planners, and all those tasked with providing a better standard of living have been forced to find better, cheaper, and more efficient solutions. Fortunately, the advancement of information and communication technology (ICT) supporting these services is quite advanced. The stakeholders can leverage these technologies to ensure a better quality of life for city inhabitants. Thus, the term ‘smart cities’ has been coined; whereby cities embark on initiatives that leverage ICT and technology to provide a better quality of life.

One significant challenge with smart city projects is the investments needed. In a conference held in 2018,³ the Iskandar Regional Development Authority of Malaysia (“IRDA”) presented the Malaysian government’s aspiration for the Iskandar Malaysia smart city. One of the items mentioned was on the matter of funding, in regards that more smart city developments need private organizations’ support to fund and sustain the cities. Traditionally, cities are funded by government, for example, through tax collections. However, with funds getting more depleted, cities pursuing smart city initiatives need to find alternative sources of income; thus, the need for private investments.⁴ However, one significant challenge with private corporations’ involvement in smart cities is the business model, where traditional government-funded projects are predominately driven by altruistic motivation. Private corporations’ obligation is ultimate to their shareholders, where expectations are simple: a healthy bottom line.

Strategic smart city initiatives often come with non-financial benefits, for example, data. Smart cities collect a lot of data from many data points. The Selangor Smart City initiative for example, involves implementation of many digital services to facilitate city dwellers’ everyday living, including CCTV, intelligent traffic management systems, smart parking, cashless payments, air quality indicators and water quality indicators. If analysed and synthesised correctly, these data can be transformed into other meaningful information that can be useful to many parties. However, the question of how these data can be properly and effectively monetised is still in its infancy. Until these issues can be resolved, the data collected, though valuable, would be difficult to be valued and quantified for financial analysis. Investment in smart cities is fraught with challenges; returns are uncertain, business models are still in infancy, and investments take a long time to recover.⁵ Thus, perhaps many smart cities would not have been realised if decision-makers had relied solely on financial motivations. With the many challenges surrounding the financing of smart cities, practitioners and academics are exploring alternative approaches for sustainable smart city funding. With the increasing complexity of the smart city ecosystem, new business models need to be explored; ideally where the city can financially sustain its smart services. The frugal innovation concept is about doing more with less, by reducing complexity and focusing on delivering the actual needs.⁶ This approach has been used mainly in engineering and industrial design, but how the same concept can also be applied to smart city business models is worth investigating.

Given that backdrop, the research questions for this study are as follows:

1. How extensive is the literature coverage for smart city business models, specifically concerning local authorities?
2. For the literature that covers the above, what are the business models proposed, if any?
3. Can frugal innovation theory be applied to develop a smart city business model?
The objectives of this research are as follows:
1. To investigate the extent to which business models for local authorities’ smart city initiatives are covered by literature.
2. To identify any business models that have been proposed for local authorities to deploy smart city initiatives successfully.
3. To investigate whether frugal innovation theory can be applied to the smart city business model.

Methods

Ethics

This study was conducted according to the guidelines and approved by the Research Ethical Committee of Multimedia University, Malaysia (EA1402021).

This study was designed to present a literature review, research gap analysis, and insights on the extent to which business models for local authorities’ smart city initiatives are covered by literature. This literature review was based on the Tranfield’s five stages of systemic review⁷ as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Tranfield’s five stages of systemic review.

Stage one: planning the review

The main goal of this review is to ascertain the nature and form of research about business models adopted by local authorities to deploy smart city initiatives. The paper aims to offer researchers a comprehensive review of previous works related to smart city business models. The outcome is to offer the smart city community a series of research ideas to move the field forward.

Stage two: identifying and evaluating studies: planning the review

One of the issues identified that hindered the identification of all papers that analysed business models adopted by local authorities is that other terms are also used to refer to ‘local authority’, such as local councils and municipalities. Therefore, for this study, all three terms were used and cross-referenced with other terms, including smart city, business model and frugal innovation. The study then reviewed all the available literature and excluded those that were irrelevant.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

To perform the literature review and ensure only quality studies were included, it was decided to include journal/conference papers and research articles from 2001 to 2021. The keywords that were used to select the studies are further explained in the section below.

Regarding the exclusion factors, the study excluded books, book chapters and dissertations from the sampling frame to keep the studies’ quality high, with only peer-reviewed content. Non-English content was also excluded because most recognized academic contributions are usually published in English.

Figure 2 summarizes the analysis’ inclusion/exclusion criteria.

Figure 2. Inclusion and exclusion for the review.

Keywords

This study focuses on business models for local authorities to implement smart city initiatives and the applicability of the frugal innovation theory. Thus, the keywords used were as follows:

(1) ‘Smart city’ AND ‘business model’ AND ‘frugal innovation’ and
(2) ‘Local authorities’ OR ‘local councils’ OR ‘municipalities’, which many authors use interchangeably.

Other keywords, such as ‘performance’, ‘inclusivity’, ‘technology’ and ‘success factor’ were also introduced to paint a comparative landscape on the breadth of literature available covering smart cities.

Search strategy

The main strategy adopted was to comb through the vast online database to discover literature that discussed smart city business models for local authorities. The covered online databases were Emerald, ProQuest, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, and Springer Link. The identified keywords are then looked up in all the databases above to indicate the number of literature available related to the specific topics.

Stage 3: extracting and synthesizing data

The findings of the above exercise are indicated in Table 1.⁸

Table 1. Search results based on pre-identified keywords.

Keywords combinations
No.	Online Database	Smart City	Smart City AND Performance	Smart City AND Sustainability	Smart City AND Success Factors	Smart City AND Technology	Smart City AND Business Model	Smart City AND Business Model AND Local Authority OR Local Council OR Municipal	Smart City AND Business Model AND Local Authority OR Local Council OR Municipal AND Frugal Innovation
1	Emerald	159	17	20	1	58	3	-	-
2	ProQuest	350	279	134	1	313	19	6	-
3	Scopus	26,807	4,846	1,377	51	9,569	212	6	-
4	IEEE	3,458	574	137	-	1,350	10	-	-
5	Science Direct	1,889	447	467	3	803	27	1	-
6	Springer	610	326	89	6	449	29	4	-
	Total:	33,273	6,489	2,224	62	12,542	300	17	-

From the above exercise, the narrowed search results related to the smart city business model for local authorities were reviewed to exclude any further irrelevant research. The PRISMA methodology was adopted to facilitate further the inclusion and exclusion process illustrated in Figure 3. Nevertheless, the Tranfield method remains the primary methodology adopted for this systematic literature review. Stages four and five of the Tranfield method will be discussed in the following sections.

Figure 3. Conceptual framework on the applicability of frugal innovation in smart city business model.

Results

Summary of core papers

With more than 33,273 papers, the topic of smart cities is well-covered. Specific topics within smart cities are also well-covered, including smart city technology, with 12,542 papers representing 38% from the total smart city research, smart city performance (6,489/19%) and smart city sustainability (2,224/7%). However, only 300 papers on smart city business models were found, representing only 0.9% of the research. When further analysed, a further gap regarding smart city business models for local authorities was observed, with only 17 papers found, out of which 13 were excluded because the discussions were not specifically related to business models. Further investigation revealed no papers linking the smart city business model in local authorities to frugal innovation theory. The summary of the papers reviewed are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Summary of papers reviewed.

	Authors (Year)	Findings	Business model elements	Business model mentioned	Frugal innovation
1.	⁹McLean and Roggema (2019)	Innovative policy and regulation are needed to transform consumers to prosumers, thereby achieving greater financial benefit, ownership and control	• Next-Gen infrastructure approach	Prosumer	Not mentioned
1.	⁹McLean and Roggema (2019)		• Innovative regulation	Prosumer	Not mentioned
2.	¹⁰Papageorgiou et al. (2020)	The presented SPN business model framework could serve as a common platform for communication purposes and open innovation	• End users	• Outright purchase	Not mentioned
			• API gateways	• Subscription
			• System integrators	• Freemium with limited feature
			• External service providers	• Free ad-supported model
			• City/municipalities	• Free city-sponsored model.
3.	¹¹Anthopoulos et al. (2016)	In practice, cities adopt different business models than the ones suggested in literature. The ownership business model is the most optimal, the Open Business Model the most preferred and the Municipal-Owned-Development as an alternative model		• Ownership	Not mentioned
				• Open
				• Municipal-owned-development
4.	¹²Liu et al. (2021)	PPPs focus more on building new or improving existing infrastructure		• Public-private partnership (PPP)	Not mentioned
5.	¹³Schrotter and Hürzeler (2020)	EXCLUDED. Paper discusses technology perspective
6.	¹⁴Spruytte et al. (2019)	EXCLUDED. While the paper discusses the revenue/cost model of WiFi deployment, the focus of the study is not on the business model, but rather the technical angle on how to deploy the models
7.	¹⁵Liu et al. (2020)	EXCLUDED. The paper discusses technical aspects of IOT deployment
8.	¹⁶Ramos et al. (2021)	EXCLUDED. The paper discusses technical aspects of national database related to health
9.	¹⁷Kumar et al. (2021)	EXCLUDED: The paper discusses flood mitigation policies
10.	¹⁸Ng (2018)	EXCLUDED. The paper discusses unconventional business models in the context of regulatory sandboxing policies, but not the business model itself
11.	¹⁹Cohen (2018)	EXCLUDED. The paper discusses business model in the context of ride sharing, and its relationship with the local government
12.	²⁰Ji et al. (2014)	EXCLUDED. The paper discusses design and implementation of IOT in smart cities from a technical perspective
13.	²¹Spiliotopoulou and Roseland (2020)	EXCLUDED: The paper discusses sustainable community development from a social perspective
14.	²²Ford et al. (2021)	EXCLUDED. The paper mentions new business model should be incorporated into the smart local energy system, but does not discuss the model itself
15.	²³Gallico (2020)	EXCLUDED. The paper focuses on standard of sustainability and multiculturalism specifically for fashion industry
16.	²⁴McShane and Grechyn (2019)	EXCLUDED. The paper discusses business model as one of the ingredients for the deployment of local government WiFi
17.	²⁵Octavianthy and Purwanto (2018)	EXCLUDED. While the paper extensively discusses many types of business models, it is in relation to a very specific scenario, i.e. the implementation of smart energy in Depok, Indonesia, with limited discussion on the theory behind the business models		• Fiscal incentive
				• Low loan interest
				• Viability gap fund
				• Increased tipping fee
				• Grant
				• Electricity pricing

Research gap one: research on smart city business

Table 2 mentions several business models. However, discussion on the business models’ theory to allow a generic application to local authority smart city initiatives, has been insufficient.

Research gap two: frugal innovation application in smart city business model

The exercise in Table 2 revealed that no papers linked the smart city business model in local authorities to frugal innovation theory, thus presenting a potential research gap.

Discussion

From the many engagements with the Malaysian local authorities relating to smart cities, five common ingredients of a smart city regularly emerge: the people, the needs, financial sustainability, inclusivity and technology. Technology plays a key role in enabling a smart city, but it is important not to fall into technological determinism; whereby a smart city’s function is blindly dictated by technology.²⁶ Any smart city is about the citizens’ needs. A smart city merely uses technology to address those specific needs. Thus, a smart city should intuitively adapt and respond to the needs of its citizens.

A good business model would increase a smart city’s chances of success. Firstly, a good business model would ensure financial sustainability for the city’s smart services and reduce the chances of those services being abandoned. Secondly, a good business model would also include existing players from within the city’s ecosystem. By having these elements, there would be less resistance, a lower entry barrier and a greater sense of ownership, encouraging the services’ longevity. With this in mind, the findings of this study are as follows:

1. Table 1 reveals that the topic of the smart city is well-covered by research and specific sub-topics within smart cities, including technology, performance, and sustainability. However, a research gap is found in the smart city business model for local authorities, with only 17 papers found, out of which only four were somewhat relevant. Thus, the study posits that gaps exist between the problems faced in the industry itself and available research on the subject, and that the business models that are researched are still insufficient to address the problems faced by the local authorities.
2. Table 2 shows that the following business models were mentioned concerning local authorities’ smart city initiatives:
- • PPP
- • Prosumer
- • Outright purchase
- • Subscription
- • Freemium
- • Ad-supported
- • City-sponsored
- • Ownership
- • Open model
- • Municipal-owned development
However, the papers did not extensively cover the elements that are needed for a smart city business model. Thus, it would be challenging to apply the business models mentioned to a generic local authority smart city initiative.
3. Based on the findings, there are no papers related to frugal innovation theory. However, literature and evidence in frugal innovation prove that it can be a game-changer for a sustainable business model.²⁷ The framework applying the concept of frugal innovation to the elements of smart city mentioned above is submitted to depict frugal innovation applicability in the smart city business model. In this model, it is submitted that frugal innovation can be applied to the three elements that make up a successful smart city business model: the user element, the commercial elements and the technological elements. When considering each of these three, the question that must consistently be asked is how they all can be successfully achieved with the least resources, as depicted in Figure 3 below.

A limitation of this study is the number of keywords selected. Keyword selections are based on research focus. However, there is possibility of obtaining more articles if the keywords are expanded to field of study that are not specific in nature such as municipality. This could possibly be publication bias.

Conclusions

Based on our findings, future research can study frugal innovation initiatives in smart cities. Future research can also study alternative smart city business models for local authorities. Finally, future research could also assess the impact of frugal innovation on smart cities operations efficiency. This can potentially address how government agencies can convince private corporations to participate in smart city initiatives by convincing them that capital investment made into smart city initiatives are financially beneficial.

Financial sustainability is crucial for implementing smart cities, and a good business model would support this sustainability. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of studies dedicated to this topic. Frugal innovation has been applied to many other areas and industries; no literature supports the notion that it has been applied to the smart city business model. Further research on this concept would be beneficial because frugal innovation theory is a proven model for success,⁶ and thus would potentially benefit an initiative that ultimately aims to provide a better life for all.

Data availability

Underlying data

Figshare: Summary of papers reviewed for business models for local authority smart city https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14877123.⁸

This project contains the following underlying data:

• Data file 1. (summary of papers, xlsx format).

Reporting guidelines

Figshare: PRISMA checklist and flow diagram https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16722991

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Acknowledgements

We thank the Multimedia University, Malaysia, for sponsoring the publication fee of this paper.

References

1. Statistic of Local Authorities According to State: Official Portal Local Government Department:2021, June 14.Reference Source
2. ITU, Technical Report on Smart Sustainable cities: An analysis of definitions:2014.
3. “Smart Cities: Re-Imagining Smart Solution In Today’s Digital Age Conference”, 28th – 29th March 2018, Kuala Lumpur.
4. Fishman TD, Flynn M: Using public-private partnerships to advance smart cities. Deloitte. 2018. Retrieved September 20, 2021. Reference Source
5. Galati SR: Funding a Smart City: From Concept to Actuality. Smart Cities. 2017; 17–39. Publisher Full Text
6. Radjou N, Prabhu JC: Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better with Less. London:Economist;2016.
7. Tranfield D, Denyer D, Smart P: Towards a methodology for developing evidence-informed management knowledge by means of systematic review. Br. J. Manag. 2003; 14: 207–222. Publisher Full Text
8. Mustaffa Kamal Effendee EF: Summary of Papers Reviewed for Business Models for Local Authority Smart City.xlsx (Version 1). figshare. 2021. Publisher Full Text
9. McLean L, Roggema R: Planning for a prosumer future: The case of central park, sydney. Urban Plan. 2019; 4(1): 172–186. Publisher Full Text
10. Papageorgiou G, Balamou E, Maimaris A:Developing a Business Model for a Smart Pedestrian Network Application.Yang XS, Sherratt S, Dey N, et al., editors. Fourth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Singapore:Springer;2020; vol 1027. . Publisher Full Text
11. Anthopoulos L, Fitsilis P, Ziozias C: What is the source of smart city value? A business model analysis. Int. J. Elect. Govern. Res. 2016; 12(2): 56–76. Publisher Full Text
12. Liu T, Mostafa S, Mohamed S, et al.: Emerging themes of public-private partnership application in developing smart city projects: a conceptual framework. Built Environment Project and Asset Management. 2021; 11(1): 138–156. Publisher Full Text
13. Schrotter G, Hürzeler C: The Digital Twin of the City of Zurich for Urban Planning. PFG – Journal of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geoinformation Science. 2020; 88(1): 99–112. Publisher Full Text
14. Spruytte J, Benhamiche A, Chardy M, et al.: Modeling the relationship between network operators and venue owners in public Wi-Fi deployment using non-cooperative game theory. EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw. 2019; 2019(1). Publisher Full Text
15. Liu W, Li F, Li Y:Development and Future Trends of Internet of Things.Xu Z, Choo KK, Dehghantanha A, et al., editors. Cyber Security Intelligence and Analytics. CSIA 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Cham:Springer;2020; vol 928. . Publisher Full Text
16. Ramos CD, Clamor WL, Aligaya CD, et al.:A Disaster Management System on Mapping Health Risks from Agents of Disasters and Extreme Events.Arai K, Kapoor S, Bhatia R, editors. Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2020, Volume 2. FTC 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Cham:Springer;2021; vol 1289. . Publisher Full Text
17. Kumar N, Liu X, Narayanasamydamodaran S, et al.: A systematic review comparing urban flood management practices in India to China’s sponge city program. Sustainability. 2021; 13(11): 6346. Publisher Full Text
18. Ng R: Cloud computing in Singapore: Key drivers and recommendations for a smart nation. Politics and Governance. 2018; 6(4): 39–47. Publisher Full Text
19. Cohen T: Being ready for the next uber: Can local government reinvent itself?. Eur. Transp. Res. Rev. 2018; 10(2): 1–11. Publisher Full Text
20. Ji Z, Ganchev I, O’Droma M, et al.: A cloud-based car parking middleware for IoT-based smart cities: Design and implementation. Sensors. 2014; 14(12):, 22372–22393. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | Free Full Text
21. Spiliotopoulou M, Roseland M: Urban sustainability: From theory influences to practical agendas. Sustainability. 2020; 12(18): 7245. Publisher Full Text
22. Ford R, Maidment C, Vigurs C, et al.: Smart local energy systems (SLES): A framework for exploring transition, context, and impacts. Technol. Forecast. Soc. Chang. 2021; 166: 120612. Publisher Full Text
23. Gallico D: Design point. an integrated E-learning & industry 4.0 fashion platform from Italy to Zambia. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 13th IADIS International Conference ICT, Society and Human Beings 2020, ICT 2020 and Proceedings of the 6th IADIS International Conference Connected Smart Cities 2020, CSC 2020 and Proceedings of the 17th IADIS International Conference Web Based Communities and Social Media 2020, WBC 2020 - Part of the 14th Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, MCCSIS 2020. 2020; 231–235.
24. McShane I, Grechyn V: Public wi-fi provision by Australian local government authorities. Aust. J. Public Adm. 2019; 78(4): 613–630. Publisher Full Text
25. Octavianthy D, Purwanto WW: Designing smart energy system for smart city through municipal solid waste to electricity: Techno-economic analysis. Paper presented at the E3S Web of Conferences. 2018; 67. Publisher Full Text
26. Smith M, Marx L: Does Technology Drive History?: The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. Cambridge:MIT Press;1994; 70.978-0262193474.
27. Hossain M: Frugal innovation and sustainable business models. Technol. Soc. 2021; 64: 101508. Publisher Full Text

Comments on this article Comments (0)

Version 2

VERSION 2 PUBLISHED 20 Oct 2021

Author details Author details

¹ Telekom Malaysia Bhd, Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, 60000, Malaysia
² Faculty of Management, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Selangor, 63100, Malaysia
³ Canadian University Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
⁴ University of Nottingham Malaysia, Semenyih, Selangor, 43500, Malaysia

Ezatul Faizura Mustaffa Kamal Effendee
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Magiswary Dorasamy
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Abdul Aziz Bin Ahmad
Roles: Methodology, Supervision, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

Azrin Aris
Roles: Writing – Review & Editing

Saida Harguem
Roles: Writing – Review & Editing

Maniam Kaliannan
Roles: Writing – Review & Editing

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Grant information

The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work.

Article Versions (2)

version 2

Revised

Published: 22 Jun 2022, 10:1066

https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.73373.2

version 1

Published: 20 Oct 2021, 10:1066

https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.73373.1

Copyright

© 2021 Mustaffa Kamal Effendee EF et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Download

Export To

metrics

	Views	Downloads
F1000Research	-	-
PubMed Central Data from PMC are received and updated monthly.	-	-

Citations

0

SEE MORE DETAILS

CITE

how to cite this article

Mustaffa Kamal Effendee EF, Dorasamy M, Bin Ahmad AA et al. Sustainable business model for local council’s smart city initiatives: a systematic literature review [version 1; peer review: 1 approved with reservations] F1000Research 2021, 10:1066 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.73373.1)

NOTE: it is important to ensure the information in square brackets after the title is included in all citations of this article.

track

receive updates on this article

Track an article to receive email alerts on any updates to this article.

Open Peer Review

Version 1

VERSION 1

PUBLISHED 20 Oct 2021

Views

15

Reviewer Report 09 Feb 2022

Marco Tregua, Department of Economics, Management, Institutions, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

Approved with Reservations

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.77019.r120222

Dear Authors,

There are some interesting proposals in your manuscript as well as some relevant shortcomings, please take a look at my comments below and - first and foremost - take care of proposing implications.

... Continue reading

Dear Authors,

There are some interesting proposals in your manuscript as well as some relevant shortcomings, please take a look at my comments below and - first and foremost - take care of proposing implications.

Introduction:

In the very first lines you refer to smart (and sustainable) city initiatives but you recall digital city services, please be aware of the difference and note it it at the beginning. I would suggest you to see what scholars mention about the comparison of these topics. You can refer to several publications, I can mention few as examples: Hollands, R. G (2008) ¹, Tregua, M., D’Auria, A., & Bifulco, F.
(2014)², and Ishida, T. (2017).³

You recalled the notion of smart city, I'd do that with a definition and a quote from one of the most important works in this domain, e.g., Giffinger, R. (2015),⁴ or Fernandez-Anez, V., Fernández-Güell, J. M., & Giffinger, R. (2018).⁵

Finally, I agree with your justification of the reason to perform this study, but since you deal with business models and several big firms have proposed their solutions for smart cities, I would wrap up the introduction by recalling a model or two proposed by big companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, and so on.

Please complete the introduction with a description of the structure of the chapter.

Method

This section is well written and reliable; anyway, there are two missing elements:

a) I would start from previous reviews, if any, to justify the reason for your study.
b) I would describe how you avoided subjectivity in your selection of extant literature.

Results:

Referring to table 2 is not enough to justify/describe your two research gaps. Please debate it some more. Table 2 simply reports the evidence you picked up, while it is needed to clearly state why what you reported led you to highlight a research gap.

Moreover, I wonder why this section is called results, since there are no 'real' results. This section is not actually hosting results, but
it is a description of the process you carried out.

Discussion:

I agree with your consideration on smart cities, as per the text in the first 5 lines. This consideration would have worked even better with a definition of smart city in the first section of this manuscript.

Sub-section 2 of the Discussion:

This view is limited, since big companies have their business model for smart cities. Thus, either you should explicitly consider them too, or highlight if these models are recalled by scholars in the contributions you analysed. Considering big companies would lead you to observe how business models for smart cities were set. Moreover, local agencies very often involve big companies in running smart cities projects and they cooperate in defining a business model suitable for a specific area. This is also relevant in considering 'how' and 'why' a big company gets involved in such projects.

Conclusions:

I am very surprised by the lack of implications. I agree with some of your considerations, but such a manuscript would have a very limited usefulness with nor theoretical neither practical implications and appears as an opinion paper instead of being a research paper.

Are the rationale for, and objectives of, the Systematic Review clearly stated?

Partly
Are sufficient details of the methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Yes
Is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Not applicable
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results presented in the review?

No

References

1. Hollands R: Will the real smart city please stand up?. City. 2008; 12 (3): 303-320 Publisher Full Text
2. Tregua, M D’Auria, A Bifulco, F.: Digital City towards Smart City: a theoretical overview. Proceedings 2nd International Virtual Scientific Conference. 2014.
3. Toru Ishida: Digital City, Smart City and Beyond. Companion: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion. 2017. 1151-1152 Reference Source
4. Giffinger R: Smart City Concepts: Chances and Risks of Energy Efficient Urban Development. 579: 3-16 Publisher Full Text
5. Fernandez-Anez V, Fernández-Güell J, Giffinger R: Smart City implementation and discourses: An integrated conceptual model. The case of Vienna. Cities. 2018; 78: 4-16 Publisher Full Text

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: Innovation management, international management

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.

CITE

Report a concern

Respond or Comment

Comments on this article Comments (0)

Version 2

VERSION 2 PUBLISHED 20 Oct 2021

Open Peer Review

Reviewer Status

Reviewer Reports

	Invited Reviewers
	1	2
Version 2 (revision) 22 Jun 22	read	read
Version 1 20 Oct 21	read

Marco Tregua, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
Robert Cowley, King's College London, London, UK

Comments on this article

All Comments(0)

Add a comment

Sign up for content alerts

Browse by related subjects

Back to all reports

Reviewer Report

3 Views

24 Aug 2023 | for Version 2

Robert Cowley, Department of Geography, King's College London, London, England, UK

3 Views Cite this report Responses(0)

Not Approved

Drawing on a systematic search of the extensive peer-reviewed literature, the article demonstrates that the applicability of a ‘frugal innovation’ business model has not attracted academic attention in relation to the smart city. By extension, it encourages researchers to explore this topic, in order to inform more sustainable modes of funding smart city programmes.

The basic finding about the gap in the literature is fairly straightforward, but clearly evidenced. For the article to be published, however, a rather more substantial framing of the research aims is required, along with a more generative set of conclusions.

A key reservation for me, as a reader not previously familiar with the idea of frugal innovation, is that I am left feeling unpersuaded about the reasons why this particular business model is worthy of future attention. I am sure there are all manner of other topics – and business models - which are not covered in the smart city literature – but that absence does not in itself justify further research. Certainly, if it can be shown that funding models are currently inadequate, then there would be good reason to explore new approaches, and especially those which have proven successful in somehow related governance contexts. As things stand, the authors do mention that frugal innovation has been applied to engineering and industrial design, but do not explain why it would therefore be “worth investigating” in relation to the smart city. If the smart city was largely a question of engineering or industrial design, then the relevance of frugal innovation would perhaps be self-evident. But can private sector business models be applied so easily to local government contexts? The article claims that “literature and evidence in frugal innovation prove that it can be a game-changer for a sustainable business model” (p.10), but in what ways in particular? Why specifically might this be relevant to local authorities?

Further explaining the need for research into this topic (beyond the existence of a research gap) seems vital to me if the article is to be indexed. A starting point would be to provide further insight into what frugal innovation involves – beyond the buzzwords flagged up in Figure 3. Please tell us more about how this differs from other approaches, and what others might have said about its potential applications. Are there any other fields of local authority activity, for example, where it has been applied? Which of its basic principles seem clearly relevant to smart city development? In what ways specifically does it depart from a ‘conventional business model’? (Is there only one conventional/traditional business model in any case?) Is it perhaps a new idea which has spread rapidly across lots of different fields?

Ideally, I would also like to see some concrete evidence that current funding models are not sustainable. I don’t have reason to doubt this, and the fact that it came up as a significant issue at the 2018 conference mentioned on p.3 is a good start. ‘Smart city’ programmes usually consist of specific projects in reality (which may in reality be rather small-scale) – but would it be possible to provide examples of envisioned projects in Malaysia which will probably not happen due to funding obstacles? Any examples from elsewhere of grand visions being cut down to scale, or specific initiatives being dropped for financial reasons?

For the article to be published, I would also like to see the conclusions fleshed out a little. Drawing on an earlier discussion of the reasons why frugal innovation might be relevant (as proposed above), what particular research questions should researchers be asking? What might the limitations of frugal innovation be? What more theoretical interventions might be enabled by such research? What kinds of methods do you have in mind?

I have a few more specific comments for the authors to address:

Abstract: the three sentences from “Local authorities” to “smart city initiatives” could easily be condensed into one.

P3: “Traditionally, cities are funded by government, for example, through tax collection”. This point could be much sharper. Surely, city services etc. are typically provided through tax collection – but what do you mean by “cities”? Isn’t much of the city funded by private investment? And what do you mean by ‘traditionally’? For decades, a wide array of governance and funding models have been at play in all sorts of cities, involving the private sector and all sorts of other stakeholders.

The three objectives simply repeat the three research questions. I’m not sure in any case that the third objective could be met from the present study (and it hasn’t been). I suggest rephrasing the third one as more of an overall research aim - for example: "Overall, the article aims to encourage researchers to explore the potential relevance and limitations of the frugal innovation business model to the funding of smart city projects in local authority areas”.

Methods: the second and third paragraphs of the “Ethics” subsection are not related to ethics. Wouldn’t it be better to place the ethics point at the end of the methods section (or have it as a footnote)?

Methods: clarify key point: were you searching on keywords appearing in the front matter of the articles, or looking for their appearance in the main text of the articles? (I’m guessing the latter.)

Methods: the definition of ‘quality’ is a little odd. Are all published journal articles of good quality? If peer review is the criterion, are all conference papers properly peer reviewed? “Journal/conference papers and research articles” is fuzzy – are research articles not papers? I think it would be better simply to specify that the evidence base consisted of articles and conference papers listed by the online databases shown on page 5.

Figure 2 doesn’t add value - it just repeats what has appeared in the text. Couldn’t this be deleted?

Page 7: “When further analysed…” It would be good to reword the end of this sentence for clarity – is the point that they contain no substantial discussion of business models, even though these words appear in the text?

Page 7 “A good business model would increase a smart city’s chance of success”. This does not seem like a useful analytical point. Isn’t it self-evident?

Page 8 (point 2): this just lists out what appears in Table 2. Surely, what is needed here is discussion and analysis of some sort.

Finally, I haven’t gone through closely looking for typos, but I happened to notice the following, in case it’s helpful:

Abstract: “prosperous living conditions initiatives” could be more elegantly worded. Maybe “quality of life initiatives”?

Abstract: “data is” should really be “data are”.

Abstract: “The data is tabulated for clear expression of knowledge gaps” – not sure what you mean. Could you just delete this? (Does it just mean that some findings have been presented as tables?)

Abstract: delete comma after “further” in the final sentence.

Abstract and first para: put single speech marks around ‘frugal innovation’ the first time it appears, since it is a technical term.

Intro second para: “the paper concludes” (not concluded).

Smart City Phenomenon: delete comma after “world”. “Tipped” should also be rephrased – maybe just “exceeded”.

Smart City Phenomenon: “in regards that” – rephrase eg “with regards to the need for…”

P4: “systematic” rather than “systemic”.

P7: delete comma after “initiatives”.

Are the rationale for, and objectives of, the Systematic Review clearly stated?

Partly
Are sufficient details of the methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Partly
Is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Not applicable
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results presented in the review?

Yes

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Sustainable cities; smart cities; urban governance

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to state that I do not consider it to be of an acceptable scientific standard, for reasons outlined above.

Respond to this report

Responses (0)

Back to all reports

Reviewer Report

8 Views

16 Aug 2022 | for Version 2

Marco Tregua, Department of Economics, Management, Institutions, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

8 Views Cite this report Responses(0)

Approved With Reservations

Dear Authors,

I have still concerns about this manuscript.

Please consider the recommendations below:

The need to address (or refer to) smart cities from a practical perspective has not led to any change. Please, either justify the missing change or change the content.

The structure of your work is not yet described at the end of the introduction.

I would reinforce research questions through recalling recent calls for papers/contributions.

In one of the research questions you recall frugal innovation, but the literature review doesn't offer a clear description of what it is and how it affects a smart city.

Method:

You wrote that you only reviewed 'quality studies'. Did you mean qualitative or there is another way you selected publications according to the quality of their content?

The framework comes out of blue; moreover, it is unclear how you moved from 300 contributions to just 17. Criteria for selection should be carefully described, even more if one considers you started with a dataset of 33k+ publications.

The title of the research gap one is probably incomplete, since you wrote 'business' instead of 'business model'.

Discussion:

There are two severe issues, since (a) once again the business models of top companies around the world are not cited; and (b) the discussion starts with reference to Malaysia and there is no way to track back the use of the 17 publications you selected. Was the framework used? Moreover, some considerations are very basic, e.g. 'a good business model would also include existing players from within the city’s ecosystem': I would doubt the opposite, since stakeholders/players are mentioned in every single paper on smart city and also in well reputed models.

Finally, I am wonder why there are no implications from this manuscript, nor theoretical neither empirical, apart from a consideration on frugal innovation on p. 10.

There are typos and minor mistakes, please proofread your manuscript (e.g., 'An early paper describes a smart city and one that is independent': I think you meant 'as' instead of 'an')

Kind regards

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Innovation management, international management

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.

Respond to this report

Responses (0)

Back to all reports

Reviewer Report

15 Views

09 Feb 2022 | for Version 1

Marco Tregua, Department of Economics, Management, Institutions, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

15 Views Cite this report Responses(0)

Approved With Reservations

Dear Authors,

There are some interesting proposals in your manuscript as well as some relevant shortcomings, please take a look at my comments below and - first and foremost - take care of proposing implications.

Introduction:

In the very first lines you refer to smart (and sustainable) city initiatives but you recall digital city services, please be aware of the difference and note it it at the beginning. I would suggest you to see what scholars mention about the comparison of these topics. You can refer to several publications, I can mention few as examples: Hollands, R. G (2008) ¹, Tregua, M., D’Auria, A., & Bifulco, F.
(2014)², and Ishida, T. (2017).³

You recalled the notion of smart city, I'd do that with a definition and a quote from one of the most important works in this domain, e.g., Giffinger, R. (2015),⁴ or Fernandez-Anez, V., Fernández-Güell, J. M., & Giffinger, R. (2018).⁵

Finally, I agree with your justification of the reason to perform this study, but since you deal with business models and several big firms have proposed their solutions for smart cities, I would wrap up the introduction by recalling a model or two proposed by big companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, and so on.

Please complete the introduction with a description of the structure of the chapter.

Method

This section is well written and reliable; anyway, there are two missing elements:

a) I would start from previous reviews, if any, to justify the reason for your study.
b) I would describe how you avoided subjectivity in your selection of extant literature.

Results:

Referring to table 2 is not enough to justify/describe your two research gaps. Please debate it some more. Table 2 simply reports the evidence you picked up, while it is needed to clearly state why what you reported led you to highlight a research gap.

Moreover, I wonder why this section is called results, since there are no 'real' results. This section is not actually hosting results, but
it is a description of the process you carried out.

Discussion:

I agree with your consideration on smart cities, as per the text in the first 5 lines. This consideration would have worked even better with a definition of smart city in the first section of this manuscript.

Sub-section 2 of the Discussion:

This view is limited, since big companies have their business model for smart cities. Thus, either you should explicitly consider them too, or highlight if these models are recalled by scholars in the contributions you analysed. Considering big companies would lead you to observe how business models for smart cities were set. Moreover, local agencies very often involve big companies in running smart cities projects and they cooperate in defining a business model suitable for a specific area. This is also relevant in considering 'how' and 'why' a big company gets involved in such projects.

Conclusions:

I am very surprised by the lack of implications. I agree with some of your considerations, but such a manuscript would have a very limited usefulness with nor theoretical neither practical implications and appears as an opinion paper instead of being a research paper.

Are the rationale for, and objectives of, the Systematic Review clearly stated?

Partly
Are sufficient details of the methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Yes
Is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Not applicable
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results presented in the review?

No

References

1. Hollands R: Will the real smart city please stand up?. City. 2008; 12 (3): 303-320 Publisher Full Text
2. Tregua, M D’Auria, A Bifulco, F.: Digital City towards Smart City: a theoretical overview. Proceedings 2nd International Virtual Scientific Conference. 2014.
3. Toru Ishida: Digital City, Smart City and Beyond. Companion: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion. 2017. 1151-1152 Reference Source
4. Giffinger R: Smart City Concepts: Chances and Risks of Energy Efficient Urban Development. 579: 3-16 Publisher Full Text
5. Fernandez-Anez V, Fernández-Güell J, Giffinger R: Smart City implementation and discourses: An integrated conceptual model. The case of Vienna. Cities. 2018; 78: 4-16 Publisher Full Text

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Innovation management, international management

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.

Respond to this report

Responses (0)

[1] 1. Statistic of Local Authorities According to State: Official Portal Local Government Department:2021, June 14.Reference Source

[2] 2. ITU, Technical Report on Smart Sustainable cities: An analysis of definitions:2014.

[3] 3. “Smart Cities: Re-Imagining Smart Solution In Today’s Digital Age Conference”, 28th – 29th March 2018, Kuala Lumpur.

[4] 4. Fishman TD, Flynn M: Using public-private partnerships to advance smart cities. Deloitte. 2018. Retrieved September 20, 2021. Reference Source

[5] 5. Galati SR: Funding a Smart City: From Concept to Actuality. Smart Cities. 2017; 17–39. Publisher Full Text

[6] 6. Radjou N, Prabhu JC: Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better with Less. London:Economist;2016.

[7] 7. Tranfield D, Denyer D, Smart P: Towards a methodology for developing evidence-informed management knowledge by means of systematic review. Br. J. Manag. 2003; 14: 207–222. Publisher Full Text

[8] 8. Mustaffa Kamal Effendee EF: Summary of Papers Reviewed for Business Models for Local Authority Smart City.xlsx (Version 1). figshare. 2021. Publisher Full Text

[9] 9. McLean L, Roggema R: Planning for a prosumer future: The case of central park, sydney. Urban Plan. 2019; 4(1): 172–186. Publisher Full Text

[10] 10. Papageorgiou G, Balamou E, Maimaris A:Developing a Business Model for a Smart Pedestrian Network Application.Yang XS, Sherratt S, Dey N, et al., editors. Fourth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Singapore:Springer;2020; vol 1027. . Publisher Full Text

[11] 11. Anthopoulos L, Fitsilis P, Ziozias C: What is the source of smart city value? A business model analysis. Int. J. Elect. Govern. Res. 2016; 12(2): 56–76. Publisher Full Text

[12] 12. Liu T, Mostafa S, Mohamed S, et al.: Emerging themes of public-private partnership application in developing smart city projects: a conceptual framework. Built Environment Project and Asset Management. 2021; 11(1): 138–156. Publisher Full Text

[13] 13. Schrotter G, Hürzeler C: The Digital Twin of the City of Zurich for Urban Planning. PFG – Journal of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geoinformation Science. 2020; 88(1): 99–112. Publisher Full Text

[14] 14. Spruytte J, Benhamiche A, Chardy M, et al.: Modeling the relationship between network operators and venue owners in public Wi-Fi deployment using non-cooperative game theory. EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw. 2019; 2019(1). Publisher Full Text

[15] 15. Liu W, Li F, Li Y:Development and Future Trends of Internet of Things.Xu Z, Choo KK, Dehghantanha A, et al., editors. Cyber Security Intelligence and Analytics. CSIA 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Cham:Springer;2020; vol 928. . Publisher Full Text

[16] 16. Ramos CD, Clamor WL, Aligaya CD, et al.:A Disaster Management System on Mapping Health Risks from Agents of Disasters and Extreme Events.Arai K, Kapoor S, Bhatia R, editors. Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2020, Volume 2. FTC 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Cham:Springer;2021; vol 1289. . Publisher Full Text

[17] 17. Kumar N, Liu X, Narayanasamydamodaran S, et al.: A systematic review comparing urban flood management practices in India to China’s sponge city program. Sustainability. 2021; 13(11): 6346. Publisher Full Text

[18] 18. Ng R: Cloud computing in Singapore: Key drivers and recommendations for a smart nation. Politics and Governance. 2018; 6(4): 39–47. Publisher Full Text

[19] 19. Cohen T: Being ready for the next uber: Can local government reinvent itself?. Eur. Transp. Res. Rev. 2018; 10(2): 1–11. Publisher Full Text

[20] 20. Ji Z, Ganchev I, O’Droma M, et al.: A cloud-based car parking middleware for IoT-based smart cities: Design and implementation. Sensors. 2014; 14(12):, 22372–22393. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | Free Full Text

[21] 21. Spiliotopoulou M, Roseland M: Urban sustainability: From theory influences to practical agendas. Sustainability. 2020; 12(18): 7245. Publisher Full Text

[22] 22. Ford R, Maidment C, Vigurs C, et al.: Smart local energy systems (SLES): A framework for exploring transition, context, and impacts. Technol. Forecast. Soc. Chang. 2021; 166: 120612. Publisher Full Text

[23] 23. Gallico D: Design point. an integrated E-learning & industry 4.0 fashion platform from Italy to Zambia. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 13th IADIS International Conference ICT, Society and Human Beings 2020, ICT 2020 and Proceedings of the 6th IADIS International Conference Connected Smart Cities 2020, CSC 2020 and Proceedings of the 17th IADIS International Conference Web Based Communities and Social Media 2020, WBC 2020 - Part of the 14th Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, MCCSIS 2020. 2020; 231–235.

[24] 24. McShane I, Grechyn V: Public wi-fi provision by Australian local government authorities. Aust. J. Public Adm. 2019; 78(4): 613–630. Publisher Full Text

[25] 25. Octavianthy D, Purwanto WW: Designing smart energy system for smart city through municipal solid waste to electricity: Techno-economic analysis. Paper presented at the E3S Web of Conferences. 2018; 67. Publisher Full Text

[26] 26. Smith M, Marx L: Does Technology Drive History?: The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. Cambridge:MIT Press;1994; 70.978-0262193474.

[27] 27. Hossain M: Frugal innovation and sustainable business models. Technol. Soc. 2021; 64: 101508. Publisher Full Text

Sustainable business model for local council’s smart city initiatives: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Smart city phenomenon

Methods

Ethics

Figure 1. Tranfield’s five stages of systemic review.

Stage one: planning the review

Stage two: identifying and evaluating studies: planning the review

Figure 2. Inclusion and exclusion for the review.

Stage 3: extracting and synthesizing data

Table 1. Search results based on pre-identified keywords.

Figure 3. Conceptual framework on the applicability of frugal innovation in smart city business model.

Results

Summary of core papers

Table 2. Summary of papers reviewed.

Research gap one: research on smart city business

Research gap two: frugal innovation application in smart city business model

Discussion

Conclusions

Data availability

Underlying data

Reporting guidelines

Acknowledgements

References

Comments on this article Comments (0)

Open Peer Review

Comments on this article Comments (0)

Open Peer Review

Reviewer Status

Reviewer Reports

Comments on this article

Browse by related subjects

Competing Interests Policy

Stay Updated