Green and Digital Entrepreneurship in Smart Cities

This paper investigates the relation between the development of smart city initiatives
and the number of new firms in the territory. In particular, since smart cities tend to
follow sustainable and/or digital orientations, we pay special attention to the rates of
green and digital entrepreneurship. We find evidence of a positive correlation between
smart city initiatives and entrepreneurship rates in a sample of Belgian municipalities,
particularly in the digital industries and when the level of implementation is high. In
contrast, having sustainable and/or digital orientations in smart city initiatives do not
seem to make any difference in the types of entrepreneurial initiatives considered (i.e.,
green and digital). These results support the view that smart cities are mainly
associated with technological developments. They also suggest that smart cities may
be acting as a local entrepreneurship-supporting policy.