• Intangible asset management: Course participant will be equipped with analytical skills for managing intangible assets in urban business contexts. The student awarded the highest mark should be able to apply a limited number of key concepts, analytical approaches and theories for value creation by using intangible assets (such as organizational leadership and access to urban business systems).
• Innovation economics: Critically reflect on the growing body of knowledge on smart city development through innovation, entrepreneurship and city-based business development. He or she will know how cities can be defined in economically functional terms rather than in spatial terms only. The participant should be able to engage in an evidence-based discourse on urban business development.
• Policy analysis: As future manager the student will be able to understand policies by city governments that benefit from interactions with business enterprises such as real estate developers, with managers of universities and R&D centers, with civic institutions and organized interest groups among citizens.
• Practical insights and know-how: The student will explore case studies on electromobility (with related infrastructure), city logistics, urban resilience strategies and alternative resource consumption. Examples provided are ICT-based solutions for mutual urban planning; Big Data for managing energy, water and waste; and design and prototyping of new citizens’ services.

This course is on business development and innovation environments in today’s cities. Special attention is put on so-called ‘smart cities’. The ‘smart city’ notion has displaced ‘sustainable city’ and ‘digital city’ as the word of choice to denote advanced urban infrastructure based on information and communications technology (ICT). Smart cities evolve along with new modes of value creation through the intermediation of public-private partnerships, cross-sectoral collaboration, city-led “open innovation marketplaces” and other forms of governance.

More generally, ICT applications empowers consumers in the urban marketplace as well as citizens in the wider society. The course participants will be introduced to a series of smart city cases at the level of the business firm, the city and the city district as well as at the regional level.

Special attention in the course will be placed at collaborative spaces within the urban fabric. Increasingly, a rising number of startups and innovative firms, along with entrepreneurs and young professionals, congregate in compact, resourceful enclaves in the smart city. They co-locate with other firms, R&D labs and universities in order to share ideas, produce new solutions and practice more “open innovation.” Third Generation Science Parks, business incubators and urban innovation districts are examples of organized manifestations of the mega-trends altering the location preferences of people and firms more to the center of the smart city. Many science parks in Europe are being moved to city areas or being urbanized.

Within such urban contexts, the course participants will explore business firms and entrepreneurial organizations that master intangible assets (‘hidden resources and capabilities’) when shaping strategy, managing innovation and incremental change for the purpose of creating value.

This course represents a contribution also to the ‘science of cities’, which is emerging as an inter-disciplinary field of study and related practices. New concepts, models and analytical approaches are being advanced and tested against an increasingly complex reality.

From a management perspective, the course participants will be offered a variety of analytical approaches to identify, measure and assess intangibles in business firms and other organizations and in collaborative networks among companies. We will discuss how to put intangibles into effective use, thereby also promoting more ‘knowledge-intensive’ or ‘intelligent’ organizations to succeed in a swiftly changing urban environment, which could be highly competitive and connected to the world market. Emphasis is put on several methods of managing intangible resources and capabilities in large corporations and public institutions as well as in small and medium-sized business enterprises, including start-up firms.

The course is practical in orientation by exploring case material from comparative studies of firms, institutions and different types of innovation districts in cities on three continents. Case material is drawn from smart city business environments in Barcelona and Milano, Copenhagen and Stockholm, London and Birmingham, Shanghai and Shenzhen, Chengdu and Harbin, Singapore and Saigon, Boston and New York.

Examples of readings:

Ahrend, R. et al (2014). What Makes Cities More Productive? OECD Regional Development Working Papers 2014/05.

Annerstedt, J. (2006). ”Science Parks and High­Tech Clustering” in the International Handbook of Industrial Policy. Ed. by P. Bianchi & S. Labory. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar: pp. 279­297.

Bakhshi, H., A. Freeman & P. Higgs, D. J. (2013). A Dynamic Mapping of the UK’s Creative Industries, London: NESTA.

Deloitte (2013). Shift Index Methology. San José, Deloitte Center for the Edge.

Fernandes, J. R. & P Chamusca (2014). Urban policies, planning and retail resilience, Cities 36, pp. 170–177.

Glaeser. E. (2005) Reinventing Boston: 1640-2003, Journal of Economic Geography, 5, pp. 119-153.

International Integrated Reporting Council (2013). The International <IR> Framework, London: IIRC.

Kaplan, R. S. and D. P. Norton (2004). Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes. Boston, Harvard Business School Press.

Katz, B & J. Wagner (2014). The Rise of Innovation Districts: A New Geography of Innovation in America, Washington DC: Brookings.

Krugman, P. (1996). The Self-Organising Economy, Oxford: Blackwell

Landry, C. & J. Hyams (2012). The Creative City Index, London: Comedia

Mortensen, J et al (eds) (2012), Danish Smart Cities: Sustainable Living in an Urban World. An Overview of Danish Smart City Competencies, Copenhagen: Copenhagen Capacity & Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster.

Paolo Neirotti, P et al (2014). Current trends in Smart City initiatives: Some stylised facts, Cities 38 (2014) 25–36.

Porter, M. (1995). The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City, Harvard Business Review, 73 (3), pp. 55-71.