Managing Knowledge in the Context of Smart Cities: A Systematic Review

The most recent view on smart city development has recognized that the level of technology adoption in urban contexts is no more able to reflect the real smartness of cities. Smart cities is seen as a centre of knowledge, education, and creativity. The development of smart cities is becoming more and more knowledge based. As a result, knowledge has been perceived as the core component that makes cities smart. Hence, to take advantage of the opportunities that knowledge-based economy and society can bring to the city, leaders and decision makers need to develop cities that take advantage of local knowledge and intellectual capital of the population. Therefore, they need to take initiative to adapt Knowledge Management (KM) in smart cities development. Smart cities KM offers the means to create valuable knowledge that brings consistent and sustainable added value that can therefore be useful in avoiding strategic risk, better-informed decision, and finding smart and effective business solutions. However, smart cities is a relatively new concept that still raises many questions related to its relevance in knowledge management studies. This often calls for the creation, use, capture and exploitation of new knowledge. Therefore, managing this knowledge is considered an important source of sustainable competitive advantage. However, only a few studies in the academic literature on smart city initiatives address issues related to managerial and knowledge management perspectives. This paper investigates the underlying dynamics behind KM and the need for successful implementation of KM strategies within the context of smart cities. The findings are in the main, based on thorough review of literature. It reviews the concept of smart cities and KM. The paper concludes that effectiveness of smart cities knowledge creation, exploitation and management significantly influences on effectiveness of smart city development. Therefore, smart cities governance must be able to exploit and manage knowledge that results from smart cities development.