Filippo Marchesani

Purpose: Developed for management decision's “The Practice of Making Decisions” section, this study examines a concrete managerial dilemma: what can managers learn by considering how deeply digital technologies are embedded in the urban environment alongside their availability? We examine how urban digital embeddedness is associated with innovative small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs') digital orientation (DO) and its four dimensions. Design/methodology/approach: The study combines city- and firm-level information for 24 Italian cities and 243 innovative SMEs observed over 13 years. Urban digital embeddedness captures citizens' use of home banking, municipal applications and broadband services. SMEs' DO is derived from annual mission statements and assessed across digital technology scope, digital capabilities, digital ecosystem coordination and digital architecture configuration. Relationships are estimated using a two-way fixed-effects Spatial Durbin Panel Model. Findings: The findings show that urban digital embeddedness is most consistently associated with firms' stated digital capabilities and digital ecosystem coordination, followed by digital architecture configuration, while evidence for digital technology scope is comparatively weak. Practical implications: Managers should look beyond digital technologies when making digital-strategy decisions and consider how technologies are actually embedded in the surrounding environment. Urban digital embeddedness can provide decision-relevant signals when evaluating locations, setting investment priorities, assessing external ecosystems and planning firms' digital transformation. Originality/value: The study reframes the smart city as a managerial decision environment rather than a technological backdrop. It positions urban digital embeddedness as a source of contextual signals and DO as the organisational expression of strategic digital choices made by managers.

In recent decades, the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters have raised critical questions about how cities adapt and evolve in response to extreme shocks. While the disruptive effects on infrastructure, economic activity, and social systems are well documented, less is known about how these events reshape urban dynamics related to knowledge flows and human capital attraction. Focusing on two important earthquakes in Italy (Abruzzo, 2009 and Emilia-Romagna, 2012), this paper examines the interaction between economic growth, R&D investment, and students’ mobility in a city post-natural disaster. Using a two-stage empirical approach that combines pre/post-disaster comparison with dynamic panel estimation (GMM), we find that the relationship between urban economic development and student inflows intensifies up to a certain threshold, after which it gradually weakens. Furthermore, we show that public R&D investment significantly reinforces the capacity of cities to attract students in the aftermath of natural disasters. Overall, these findings increase our understanding of cities’ reactiveness to natural disasters in the urban environment and support the governments, policymakers, and practitioners in developing urban planning and policy post-event.

Smart cities today are vibrant spaces where technology, collaboration, and sustainability come together to shape a better future. The green transition in cities is not just about building greener infrastructure or cutting emissions. It also changes how people, institutions, and businesses think and act. Drawing on institutional and signaling theory, this study conceptualizes urban green transition as a signal capable of attracting and fostering the growth and localization of green entrepreneurship. Open innovation is incorporated as a key moderating condition amplifying this relationship. Cities that foster collaboration across institutional and organizational boundaries through open data platforms, academic spin‐offs, and civic engagement strengthen their capacity to amplify these signals and support the adoption and diffusion of certified environmental management practices among firms as a proxy for green entrepreneurial engagement. Despite increasing policy attention, empirical research on the urban drivers of green entrepreneurship remains limited and often fails to explore the interplay between environmental policy, innovation ecosystems, and entrepreneurial dynamics. To address this gap, this study constructs a panel dataset of 38 Italian cities involved in smart city initiatives over the period 2010–2023, combining multiple institutional and statistical sources. Using a spatial autoregressive model, the analysis captures both direct effects and spatial spillovers, offering new empirical insights into how urban sustainability strategies diffuse across space and shape entrepreneurial clustering. Our findings indicate that urban green transition strategies significantly foster the adoption and diffusion of certified environmental management practices among firms, and that this effect is strongly amplified in cities characterized by higher levels of open innovation. These results contribute to institutional and signaling theory, extend the empirical literature on sustainable urban transitions, and inform policy design at the intersection of green development, open innovation governance, and entrepreneurial ecosystem development.

This study explores the dynamic interplay between tourism ecosystems and smart city ecosystems, focusing on their impact on urban sustainability and digital advancement in contemporary cities. Amid societal transformation, globalization, and technological evolution, cities and tourism are transitioning toward a “smart” paradigm, necessitating a nuanced understanding of their symbiotic relationship. However, despite this contemporary evolution, the dynamic and evolving nature of both ecosystems, accompanied by digital and societal changes, reveals a persistent gap between theoretical discussion and practical implementation. Applying a longitudinal empirical analysis that considers 30 Italian cities across 13 years (2010–2023), this research empirically investigates how these integrations influence digital and sustainable urban pathways. Understanding this interaction has become increasingly critical for the advancement of smart cities and tourism. Therefore, our findings aim to contribute to the academic discourse on smart cities and tourism, offering insights for policymakers and practitioners to orchestrate contemporary and future urban dynamics.

Dealing with environmental issues is a critical challenge of the current era, demanding action from both public and private actors to ensure sustainable economic growth. In response, “green business practices” have gained significant attention in recent decades. However, the role of female entrepreneurs in driving such practices, particularly in urban environments, remains underexplored. Our study addresses this gap by investigating how female entrepreneurship contributes to the adoption of green practices and the influence of public and private R&D investments, which show a dual and sometimes conflicting nature, as moderators in these processes using a sample of 30 Italian cities from 2011 to 2021. The context of Italy is significant as it is at the center of academic and policy debates surrounding green transformation and sustainable development. Our findings indicate that a high level of female entrepreneurship at the city level positively contributes to firms' green transition. Moreover, public R&D investments by cities strengthen the connection between female entrepreneurship and firms' adoption of green practices. In contrast, private R&D investments tend to weaken this relationship. These outcomes highlight the significant impact of female entrepreneurship on the local business environment, with cities with a higher concentration of women‐led companies more likely to embrace green practices than areas with fewer female entrepreneurs. The results also offer valuable policy insights, suggesting increased support for women‐led businesses could enhance the push toward sustainable business practices.