ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the challenges found and the strategies followed by firms developing open innovation strategies with public partners in smart cities projects. The management of inbound and outbound knowledge flows is increasingly relevant in corporate strategies. Within the scope of smart cities programs, firms and public organizations tend to cooperate to develop innovations, which usually are more radical than incremental. Firms involved in smart cities projects usually follow a business model experimentation approach because of the high technological risk of a large number of the projects. The chapter addresses the main key challenges for open innovation with public partners in smart cities: the governance of public-private alliances; the role of public managers; and the management of intellectual property rights with public organizations. In general, firms’ alliances with city governments are growing with the business opportunities arising from the application of technological innovation to urban services.
