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The Role of Smart Cities in Stimulating and Developing Entrepreneurship

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Managing Smart Cities

Abstract

The relationship between the smart city and entrepreneurship is bidirectional. A smart city offers new opportunities for entrepreneurship to achieve sustainable development of urban communities. They bring new challenges for entrepreneurs that must activate in ultra-connected and intelligent environments, characterized by continuous innovation. They also have some significant benefits in smart cities. One of them is the availability and quality of information and communication technologies that offer access to data and services and allow us to discover new knowledge and to implement new business ideas. The real-time connection between entrepreneurs and between entrepreneurs and government is another advantage for entrepreneurs that facilitates the exchange of information and access to the recent business ideas and innovation. The availability of highly skilled human resources is another benefit. The entrepreneurs have access to smart, creative, and involved employees that increases the chance of economic success of any viable business. The interest in social and environmental sustainability is considered another advantage that offers opportunities for entrepreneurs to invest in new green industries to reduce pollution and to support sustainable development. This chapter aims at addressing more broadly, continuative and contrasting insights on the entrepreneurial processes and new business opportunities in smart cities. Our focus will be towards the role cities can have on stimulating and developing entrepreneurship, and on the way, smart cities’ challenges could be transformed into opportunities for entrepreneurs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Jean Monnet Module “European Smart Cities for Sustainable Development”—SmartEU, co-funded by the European Union (620415-EPP-1-2020-1-RO-EPPJMO-MODULE)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Accounting, Business Information Systems and Statistics Department, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania

    Laura-Diana Radu

  2. Social Science and Humanities Research Department, Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania

    Ana Iolanda Voda

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  1. Laura-Diana Radu
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  2. Ana Iolanda Voda
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland

    Anna Visvizi

  2. Department of Management and Innovation Systems, University of Salerno, Fisciano, Italy

    Orlando Troisi

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Radu, LD., Voda, A.I. (2022). The Role of Smart Cities in Stimulating and Developing Entrepreneurship. In: Visvizi, A., Troisi, O. (eds) Managing Smart Cities. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93585-6_8

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