Building a Culture of Innovation in Smart City

By comparing the Smart City plan implemented in two cities in South Korea, Gimpo and Namyangju, Myeong et al. (2021) found the key to successfully building a culture of innovation in the city. Gimpo and Namyangju, both adopt the Smart City Concept in their city development through different approaches. Gimpo builds a smart city through top-down, high-investment, infrastructure-focused strategies, while Namyangju employs an extensive employee training and education program regarding big data analysis and data driven problem solving.

The latter case of Namyangju shows a significantly stronger culture of innovation in the implementation of their smart city initiatives. The extensive training and education of the public authorities create a system of government that is sustainable and transformative that also survives leadership changes. With the aim of improving the effectiveness, impact and responsiveness to its citizens, the government focused on building the internal process to become more data-driven and creative problem solving. The improved government process and system are proven successful in providing better service to the public including elderly care, disaster management and public utility management.

With less than half of the budget that City of Gimpo used, City of Namyangju built a lasting culture of innovation that affected a wide range of the city's public service and business. Citizen convenience increased, bureaucracy efficiency also improved with the leader’s strong commitment to not only establish hardware and heavy infrastructure but also investing the education and training to shift the dated institutional culture to a more innovative and data-driven decision making. 

Reference:

Myeong, S., Kim, Y., & Ahn, M. J. (2021). Smart City Strategies—Technology Push or Culture Pull? A Case Study Exploration of Gimpo and Namyangju, South Korea. Smart Cities, 4(1), 41-53.

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