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A case study of a Smart City initiative that has successfully applied the triple helix model to create an informal collaboration between academia, government and private industry. The study recounts how a group of university students, participating in a big data hackathon, managed to create a smart city solution prototype based on open data in only 48 hours. The solution can make the municipality more cost efficient and improve citizen services, while also contributing to reduced CO2 emissions and thus addressing a difficult societal challenge. A special attention is paid to how the smart city vision based on the triple helix model is used to align interests and enable an informal collaboration between heterogeneous stakeholders, effectively creating a win-win-win situation.

Recent trends towards openness and technical connectivity have offered the ability to drive massive social and economic change; however they demand a redefinition of relationships. We have observed a move from a polarized world where companies operate in economic markets while governments drive social progress, to an interconnected, networked world of shared resources and co-creation. One of the trends driving this change is open government data. This paper presents a framework of four value generating mechanisms from use of OGD. The framework makes it easier to compare and communicate different pathways to value generation, while highlighting the current tensions between the private/public and economic/social domains. Our proposition is that these tensions bring about possibilites for synergies and value enhancement.

Recent trends towards openness and technical connectivity have offered the ability to drive massive social and economic change; however they demand a redefinition of relationships. We have observed a move from a polarized world where companies operate in economic markets while governments drive social progress, to an interconnected, networked world of shared resources and co-creation. One of the trends driving this change is open government data. This paper presents a framework of four value generating mechanisms from use of OGD. The framework makes it easier to compare and communicate different pathways to value generation, while highlighting the current tensions between the private/public and economic/social domains. Our proposition is that these tensions bring about possibilites for synergies and value enhancement.

The impact of the digital revolution on our societies can be compared to the ripples caused by a stone thrown in water: spreading outwards and affecting a larger and larger part of our lives with every year that passes. One of the many effects of this revolution is the emergence of an already unprecedented amount of digital data that is accumulating exponentially. Moreover, a central affordance of digitization is the ability to distribute, share and collaborate, and we have thus seen an "open theme" gaining currency in recent years. These trends are reflected in the explosion of Open Data Initiatives (ODIs) around the world. However, while hundreds of national and local governments have established open data portals, there is a general feeling that these ODIs have not yet lived up to their true potential. This feeling is not without good reason; the recent Open Data Barometer report highlights that strong evidence on the impacts of open government data is almost universally lacking (Davies, 2013). This lack of evidence is disconcerting for government organizations that have already expended money on opening data, and might even result in the termination of some ODIs. This lack of evidence also raises some relevant questions regarding the nature of value generation in the context of free data and sharing of information over networks. Do we have the right methods, the right intellectual tools, to understand and reflect the value that is generated in such ecosystems?