Smart and sustainable cities are expected to form a cornerstone for achieving resource efficiency and sustainability worldwide. In this specific study we introduce a holistic framework for determining a repository of key performance indicators (KPIs) that are able to evaluate both business-as-usual and novel technologies and services related to smart city solutions. The framework includes six steps: (a) Clustering of the technology/service solutions into groups called Transition Tracks; (b) definition of the main groups of stakeholders; (c) definition of KPIs dimensions (or domains); (d) definition of KPIs repository per dimension; (e) definition of the scope of evaluation per KPI; and (f) threshold definition per KPI. The implementation of the proposed framework led to the development of a repository of 75 KPIs categorized in six dimensions (technical, environmental, economic, social, ICT and legal KPIs) with the corresponding levels of assessment and stakeholders’ group of interest. The proposed repository can serve as a great basis for similar projects to monitor and evaluate the performance of their solutions. Tips and guidance based on the actual implementation and lessons learned from a smart city project are provided.

Cities are challenged with increasing population growth and need to implement smart solutions to become more resilient to economic, environmental, and social challenges posed by ongoing urbanization. This study reviewed business model development frameworks and developed a practical tool to help cities assess business models by adapting components of the Business Model Canvas (BMC) and adding new ones that operationalize the smart city dimensions. The Smart City BMC (SC-BMC) proposed provides a practical framework that supports developing and communicating a more holistic and integrated view of a smart city business model. It also supports creatively innovating toward more sustainable value creation. As a framework, the SC-BMC bridges sustainable value creation for business model development and smart city innovation.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to synthesise the socioeconomic context, personality, knowledge and social capital into a systemic framework, named the “entrepreneurial path” that demonstrates the process of transforming initial entrepreneurial intentions to a growing venture. This systemic framework decouples the overall complexity of the entrepreneurial realisation to three main subsystems: entrepreneurial intentions and venture idea formation; barriers of transition from nascent to active entrepreneur; and active and growing ventures.Design/methodology/approach: The paper employs a systemic thinking approach to decouple the complexity of the subject. Survey techniques and digital social network discussion forums were used for the collection of primary qualitative data from multiple stakeholders.Findings: The conceptual framework, named the entrepreneurial path, highlights the importance of different factors at each stage of the entrepreneurial realisation. Especially the importance of factors such as perceived desirability, feasibility, self-efficacy, network ties and social capital has been identified as central. Needs for managerial skills and resources for the new venture come to play only on the later stage. Each of those factors though, plays a distinctive role in the different stages of the realisation and in dependence to the maturity of the entrepreneurial context.Research limitations/implications: Further research may examine whether these factors that have been identified by successful entrepreneurs and stakeholders are reflecting the experience for those who have not been successful in their effort to create their venture.Practical implications: The entrepreneurial path provides a supportive tool for: academics designing focussed entrepreneurship education programmes and research; managers in intermediate structures to identify the specific needs of nascent and early-stage entrepreneurs in comparison to the needs of entrepreneurs in the growth stage; and for policy makers prioritising on supportive structures and institutions directing their actions to specific stages or barriers of the process or creating holistic and evolving structures based on the maturity of the entrepreneurial context.Originality/value: The decoupling of the process of transforming initial entrepreneurial intentions to a growing venture demonstrates that different approaches are required in order to foster each one of the factors identified. Focussing on activities and resources on one stage at the time, or presenting parallel activities that reflect the different level of maturity of regions, institutions, individuals and societal perceptions may provide better service to nascent and active entrepreneurs, than considering treating entrepreneurial intentions as a unified process.

As cities grow rapidly and energy needs increase, shaping an effective energy transition is a top priority towards urban sustainability and smart development. This study attempts to answer three key research questions that can help city authorities, planners and interested agents simplify and increase the transparency of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) selection for smart city and communities (SCC) projects focusing on energy transition and creation of Positive Energy Districts (PEDs): Question 1: “What resources are available for extracting such KPIs?”; Question 2: “Which of those KPIs are the most suitable for assessing the energy transition of smart city projects and PED-related developments?” and Question 3: “How can a project-specific shortlist of KPIs be developed?”. Answering these questions can also serve as a major first step towards a “universal” KPI selection procedure. In line with this purpose, an experiential approach is presented, capitalizing on knowledge and lessons learned from an ongoing smart city project in Europe (POCITYF) that focuses on PED deployment. Under this framework, a) a review of smart city KPI frameworks has been conducted, resulting in a pool of 258 indicators that can potentially be adopted by smart city projects; b) eight key dimensions of evaluations were extracted, setting a holistic performance framework relevant to SCCs; c) a detailed evaluation process including pre-determined criteria and city-needs feedback was applied to shortlist the KPI pool, leading to a ready-to-be-used, project-specific list of 63 KPIs and d) KPIs were sorted and analyzed in different granularity levels to further facilitate the monitoring procedure. The experiential procedure presented in this study can be easily adapted to the needs of every smart city project, serving as a recommendation guide.

We report on a novel evaluation framework to globally assess the footprint of smart cities and communities (SCC) projects, being also expandable to the case of smart grid related projects. The uniform smart city evaluation (USE) framework is constructed upon three complementary evaluation axes: the first one aims to weigh up the success of a SCC project based on performance metrics against pre-defined project-specific target values. The second axis focuses on the project’s impact towards the sustainability of a city and it is bench-marked against national and international key objectives arising from strategic plans. This bench-marking feeds the third axis which provides a more inclusive evaluation against four pre-defined and widely acclaimed sectors of interest. The steps to be followed for the uniform evaluation of each axis and corresponding index are presented in detail, including necessary key performance indicator (KPI) normalization, weighting, and aggregation methods. The resulting indices’ scores for each axis (namely project performance index, sustainability impact index, and sustainability performance index) can be post-processed with adequate data processing and visualization tools to extract important information on the extent to which the range of success of a SCC project contributes to the city sustainability progress. Illustrative examples from an on-going SCC project are provided to highlight the strengths of the approach. The proposed framework can be used to compare multiple projects within a city and sustainability and project performance in different cities, evaluate the interventions chosen per project against city needs, benchmark and design future projects (with, e.g., reverse engineering, projections), as well as evaluate various spatial and temporal scales.