How Smart Cities Explore New Technologies

The concept of smart city is considered as a new paradigm of urban development. Information and communication technologies are expected to transform cities into smart cities and improve the citizens' quality of life. However, smart city initiatives still have difficulties to leverage value from technology opportunities. How smart city initiatives examine the possibilities of new technologies is therefore a highly interesting question. Based on a multiple case study we identify two different approaches and factors that influence the choice of approach: Cities either initially focus on use cases solving urban challenges, or on a systematic build-up of a technological platform for future use cases. Innovation adoption research is used as a theoretical basis.