Smart City Leadership Programme
Supporting Smart CitiesSMART CITIES & LEADERSHIP
Cities play a vital role in addressing the increasingly complex array of challenges that society now faces, from economic prosperity, community engagement and resource stewardship. The need to change society’s habits and behaviours, the need to design and manage services in new and different ways and the need to respond to and exploit the potential that modern technologies offer, are all characteristics of future, successful cities. The task of city leaders to steer and shape their city’s destiny has never been more crucial.
Opportunity Peterborough, in partnership with the British Standards Institute (BSI) and UrbanDNA, has developed the Smart City Leadership Programme (SCLP) as part of the UK’s Future City Demonstrator Programme. The programme has been thoroughly tested in Peterborough, UK, which was awarded World Smart City in 2015. It is also being delivered in a number of cities In India, funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as part of the Indian Smart Cities Initiative. The SCLP has been designed to ensure that the essential leadership component of Smart City development is understood and recognised as a necessary part of a city’s commitment to realise its smart ambitions.
PETERBOROUGH’S IMPACT
- Played a lead role in the development of British Standards Institute’s (BSI) suite of Smart City Standards
- Chair of the BSI’s Smart and Sustainable Cities Committee (SDS/2)
- A founder member of the Cities Standards Institute
- Attends the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smart Cities
- A member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Circular Cities Network
Delivers a DFID-funded Smart City Leadership Programme for the Indian city of Amaravati and for the state of Madhya Pradesh - The team has presented at over 50 international conferences and continues to acquire local, national and international media coverage peaking with the ‘World Smart City Award’ in 2015

“We are beginning to think about smart outcomes for our people rather than smart, hi-tech stuff as inputs”
THE APPROACH
- The programme is delivered over two and a half consecutive days involving a wide range of city leaders, using the innovative “BlueRoom” method of working
- To set the scene and enable the content to be fine-tuned, all participants are asked to complete an online survey prior to attending the programme
- A “knowledge wall” of focused research materials is prepared to help stimulate creative and innovative thinking and to inform discussion and debate
- Breakout sessions drive deeper insights before testing in plenary sessions
- As a precursor to developing an agreed way forward, participants assess the current smart status of the host city using the Smart City Maturity Matrix set out in BSI PD8100
- The final sessions begin the creation of an outline Smart City Roadmap which includes interconnections and interdependencies between identified initiatives.
PROGRAMME OBJECTIVES
The Smart City Leadership Programme is aimed at pan-city leadership, with attendance being representative of the team necessary to drive forward the Smart City agenda within the host city. This will include public, private and third sector senior executives. The programme is necessarily intensive and requires high-level commitment over two and a half days. Overall it aims to:
- Increase the personal and collective knowledge amongst city leaders about the need for, and possibilities arising from, a smart city approach
- Establish the foundations needed to increase the pace at which the city is able to respond to and build upon to the ‘smart city’ opportunities
- Improve alignment of the human and systems fabric for collaboration within the city leadership community
- Explore new ideas and start to shape tangible opportunities to engage with a range of specific initiatives
- Construct an outline roadmap for the host city based on an honest leadership assessment of its current level of development
- ‘Share the burden’ of developing common solutions to identified city challenges and needs and,
- Create the foundations for transformational leaps in thinking in the city to ensure that it can address and sustain improvement on the ‘big challenges’ it faces more effectively.
PROGRAMME OUTPUTS
- The Programme will help to develop a cohesive, pan-city leadership team with a shared understanding of what “smart leadership” means for participating cities
- An open assessment of the city’s progress towards a smarter future using BSI PAS 181 Smart City Framework and the PD8100 Smart City Overview maturity framework
- A bespoke, co-created roadmap will help to maintain focus and momentum towards the agreed goals and is now forming the basis of current discussions regarding Peterborough;’ “Smart” vision, ambitions and goals.
MORE INFORMATION
Download our information sheets using the links below or get in touch with us to find out more:
Peterborough, UK – home to a thriving Digital & Creative Sector
About the Future Peterborough programme
Supporting Smart Cities in Taiwan
For more information from our Smart City team please email: info@opportunitypeterborough.co.uk.