ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on digital and cyber-physical policy platforms that create externalities and network effects and discusses the way they assist local and regional innovation and smart growth. It deals with a literature review that refers to the conceptual framework of platform-based growth and how digital assets and commons create a chain of events between network-based business development, disruptive innovation, and smart growth. The drivers of smart growth are not restricted to digital technologies, but also comprise human capabilities and cognition, intense communication and collaboration. In the sphere of public policy, platforms are organised as public goods, especially is areas where the demand conditions do not attract the interest of private investments. The rise of the Internet, the use of smart environments and the proliferation of hybrid products sustain platform-based smart growth.
