Transformation through digital innovation is becoming an imperative for every city. The 'Smart City' concept promises to solve the most urgent queries of progressive urbanization in the area of mobility, energy, water supply, security, housing deprivation, and inclusion. Despite the exploitation of existing potential in lighthouse-cities that include Barcelona, London, Munich, Lyon, and Vienna, the less tenacious pursuit of smart city possibilities in the majority of municipalities has resulted in major discrepancies between leading smart cities and those that are less aspirational. Although the necessity of action is frequently recognized, an appropriate path of action remains obscure. Smart Cities: Introducing Digital Innovation to Cities offers answers, with clarifying examples, to questions that have remained unanswered for many cities. The book identifies and addresses the core elements and potential of smart cities, best practice methods and tools to be implemented, as well as how diverse stakeholders might be effectively integrated. Based on perennial international research in the field of smart cities, this book brings together the authors' collective experience in practice-based political, administrative, and economic projects to provide a common framework to guide and engage key stakeholders in the transformation and realization of smart cities.

Platform business tactics are highly visible and dominant in business today. Prominent firms in industries such as information services, retail, and travel, have embraced platform thinking. Still, many others are engaged in a platform game without realizing it, often to negative consequences. The Business of Electric Vehicles: A Platform Perspective develops this theme with an illustrative focus on the battery electric vehicle segment of the automobile industry. It traces the development of the industry, identifies key decisions by various participants, and analyzes these decisions from a platform strategy lens. The authors emphasize that platform characteristics and network effects are at the core of the electric vehicle industry. For electric vehicles, the two-sided platform nature of the industry underlines the need for a well-coordinated strategy on both sides of the market. This analysis reveals that industry participants - vehicle producers, providers of charging locations, government and policy makers (with the notable exception of an industry newcomer, Tesla, which has astutely employed platform thinking in its core decisions) - have executed a flawed strategy that fails to recognize and leverage the platform aspect of the industry.