Within this article, the strengths and weaknesses of crowdsourcing for idea generation and idea selection in the context of smart city innovation are investigated. First, smart cities are defined next to similar but different concepts such as digital cities, intelligent cities or ubiquitous cities. It is argued that the smart city-concept is in fact a more user-centered evolution of the other city-concepts which seem to be more technological deterministic in nature. The principles of crowdsourcing are explained and the different manifestations are demonstrated. By means of a case study, the generation of ideas for innovative uses of ICT for city innovation by citizens through an online platform is studied, as well as the selection process. For this selection, a crowdsourcing solution is compared to a selection made by external experts. The comparison of both indicates that using the crowd as gatekeeper and selector of innovative ideas yields a long list with high user benefits. However, the generation of ideas in itself appeared not to deliver extremely innovative ideas. Crowdsourcing thus appears to be a useful and effective tool in the context of smart city innovation, but should be thoughtfully used and combined with other user involvement approaches and within broader frameworks such as Living Labs.

Taking the region of Flanders in Belgium as a case study, this article reflects on how smart cities initiated a grassroots initiative on data interoperability. We observe that cities are struggling due to the fragmentation of data and services across different governmental levels. This may cause frustrations in the everyday life of citizens as they expect a coherent user experience. Our research question considers the relationship between individual characteristics of decision makers and their intention to use data standards. We identified criteria for implementing data standards in the public sector by analysing the factors that affect the adoption of data governance, based on the Technology Readiness and Acceptance Model (TRAM), by conducting an online survey (n = 205). Results indicate that respondents who score high on innovativeness have a higher intention to use data standards. However, we conclude that personality characteristics as described in the TRAM-model are not significant predictors of the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of data standards. Therefore, we suggest exploring the effects of network governance and organisational impediments to speed-up the adoption of open standards and raise interoperability in complex ecosystems.

Several studies indicate that only a small minority of Web 2.0 users actively participates, while the minority do not contribute at all. This article investigates whether a similar division applies for adolescents' Internet behavior. Using Szuprowicz' (1995) typology of interactivity, we distinguish different types of user-generated content (UGC): media, narrative, and metadata UGC. Our results show a 20%–80% division between high- and low-frequency seeders. Furthermore, we utilize the uses-and-gratifications paradigm to investigate how these high- and low-frequency seeders differ in their overall gratifications obtained by WWW use. Although the gratifications' rank orders are identical for all groups, their magnitudes differ significantly. Finally, this article focuses on how these WWW gratifications can predict seeding, while controlling for socio-demographics and usage frequency

This article investigates Belgian business-to-business (B2B) companies’ perceptions of and attitudes toward social media, matching the findings with existing U.S., U.K., and Dutch research. Using survey data from a nonrepresentative judgment sample of 92 Belgian B2B companies, we show that 85.9% of Belgian B2B companies that participated in our research use social media to ensure their influence on target groups. The survey also reveals that 40.8% of IT companies implement a social media strategy against only 26.7% of industrial B2B companies. Relying on the technology acceptance model, we argue that IT companies are more inclined to adopt social media because they evaluate social media’s usefulness higher than industrial enterprises. Qualitative follow-up research (in-depth interviews with 11 B2B enterprises) further explains the observed differences and similarities between both sectors, analyzing perceived benefits and risks, social media knowledge, and strategies. We conclude the article by listing various suggested actions that can help B2B companies effectively leverage social media.