Understanding the relationships between information architectures and business models: An empirical study on the success configurations of smart communities

With the development of Internet of Things (IoT) and big data, many smart city and smart community projects bloomed in recent years. Following the two approaches of smart city development from Kuk and Janssen (2011), the study proposed a synergetic framework for understanding the relationship between information architectures and business models. Since community is a basic unit of a city, the development goals of a smart city are needed to be implemented at the level of communities. The development path of smart community is a configuration set including both information architecture factors and business model patterns. Based on the cases of 69 communities from Beijing, China, we explored successful configurations based on the framework. Using the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) method, we found that a successful smart community depends on the integration between information architectures and business models, and different business models rely on different information architectures elements. Networking, terminals, and sensors are key information architecture elements that are used more frequently in business models.