City Stakeholder Collaboration in Complex Innovation Project: the Cultural Service System «MuseoTorino»

In tourism literature the adoption of a systemic approach, based on the collaboration of multiple stakeholders, is assuming growing importance in many contexts. At urban level, it has been recognized the value of collectively leveraging cultural heritage as a strategy for tourism development. In this direction, collaboration among city stakeholders can be sustained through complex cultural innovation projects. However, research on innovation in tourism industry is still scanty. Moreover, in tourism studies, stakeholders collaboration has hitherto been mainly explored in the context of tourism planning and only few studies analyze the dynamics of stakeholders interaction in carrying on innovation projects. The paper aims at contributing to fill this research gap through an empirical investigation of the development process of an innovative cultural service system: the 'smart' and 'diffused' city museum. In the emerging logic of smart cities, it distinguishes itself from traditional museums since it is spread outside the walls of a single museum and local cultural resources can be experienced both in person and remotely through smart technologies. In this sense, museums also become living labs, i.e. platforms of interaction among city stakeholders fuelling idea generation and innovation development. In order to explore the dynamics of stakeholder collaboration in developing such a new cultural service system, we conduct a case study research of "MuseoTorino", an international-level best practice of a smart and diffused museum in the city of Turin. To collect data the authors conduct semi-structured interviews with some relevant stakeholders involved in the project and triangulate them with document materials. Considering the development and maintenance of "MuseoTorino" as a process of value co-creation and adopting a multi-actor perspective on project-based collaboration, we identify how stakeholder interactions contribute to co-creation in the various stages of the innovation process and mechanisms sustaining their engagement and resource integration in the project. In this sense, the paper also offers interesting insights for cultural heritage managers and policy makers as for the effective management of cultural innovation projects through stakeholder's engagement as co-developers and co-producers of new cultural service systems and their resource and knowledge integration.