Understanding The Relationship Between Smart Cities And Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: The Case Of Sydney

Smart city literature is overdrawn with discussions on public services such as transportation while there is a need to broaden the analysis to understand the very rich dynamics of cities. In this chapter, the goal is to focus on the rise of technology-based entrepreneurs in cities which are creating emerging digital technologies. Cities have been a popular unit of analysis for technological development and economic activities due to their high dependency on immediate local context factors. Nowadays, the transformation of cities into “smart” has increased their role further – both for economic value and for technological growth. This paper aims to expand the smart city concept to an ecosystem approach where cities become hubs of digital technologies. By combining the previous literature on entrepreneurship and digital technologies within a particular urban context, this paper discusses how smart cities could be a solid base to build digital entrepreneurship ecosystems for sustainable, liveable and competitive cities. In particular, the paper provides a case study for Sydney by illustrating the interactions between smart cities and digital entrepreneurship ecosystems in practice. The chapter ends with a summary of findings and implications for both policy makers and digital entrepreneurs.