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.

In nowadays knowledge economy, no more general 'best practice' innovation management exists. Within this paper we investigate the potential of Living Labs as open innovation systems that foster different knowledge transfers amongst the actors participating in them. By means of an in-depth case study research we explore a variety of hypotheses abstracted from the open innovation literature on knowledge transfers and other variables influencing exchange and collaboration in open innovation systems. We conclude that given certain criteria are met, Living Labs can be a solution for sustainable innovation development.

Background: The vast differences in sampling techniques, cultural contexts between international studies, the differences in age groups of the samples and various definitions used to measure sexting make it hard to compare how sexting behaviour has evolved over the past years. This exploratory study aims to address this critical gap in the research by using two datasets of a biennial study on adolescents’ media use. The first aim of this study is to compare the sexting prevalence and correlates (i.e. age, gender and smartphone ownership) of youth in 2015 and 2017. The second aim is to investigate the risk mitigation behaviours of youth who engage in sexting and to assess how their behaviours differ between the two time points. Methods: The data for cohort 1 were collected in October and November 2015 and comprise of 2663 students from 11 secondary schools in the Dutch-speaking community of Belgium. For the second cohort, the data were collected in October and November 2017 and comprise of 2681 students from 10 secondary schools. A weighing factor was implemented on the dataset. Results: The results show sexting behaviour has significantly increased between cohorts, with 8.3% of the respondents having sent a sext in the first cohort, compared with 12.1% in the second cohort. The sexting prevalence rates also significantly increased between cohorts when taking into account students who owned a smartphone. Furthermore, engagement in sexting was associated with being older, and no gender differences were found. In the second cohort, 36.8% of youth who had sent a sext were identifiable in those images. There were no differences between cohorts. Conclusion: The results indicate that other factors next to smartphone ownership may be associated with an increase in sexting prevalence. The findings also highlight the need for the development of age-appropriate sexting educational materials.