Conceptualizing semi-temporary project networks through actor roles in smart city innovation

• The study proposes a framework to explain how project network roles, membership, and positions impact innovation. • Findings show how key actor roles, positions, and interactions drive effective innovation in project networks. • Findings indicate six roles’ patterns associated with smart city innovation: i) the orchestrator, ii) facilitator, iii) integrator, iv) co-creator, v) tester, and vi) knowledge developer. • Orchestrator's role matters, but supporting roles - specialized roles that assist in advancing specific parts of the project – can be more crucial in specific innovation tasks. • Semi-temporary project networks to explain semi temporariness in smart city projects are introduced. Our study examines the under-theorized, yet essential roles adopted by actors in fostering urban innovation, with a focus on the organization of project networks in smart cities, and conceptualizes these as semi-temporary project networks, a new form of organizing innovation. Specifically, it addresses two research questions: (1) How do actors adopt or create roles when organizing project networks for smart city innovation? and (2) How do these roles enable and promote innovation in complex, multi-actor environments such as smart cities? Drawing on two case studies of smart city project networks, the study identifies six distinct actor roles that contribute to innovation: i) the orchestrator, ii) facilitator, iii) integrator, iv) co-creator, v) tester, and vi) knowledge developer. By mapping the actors’ roles and linking them to project networks literature, we show empirically that the role of the orchestrator matters in project development, but some supporting roles in the specific innovation tasks become even more relevant than the orchestrator itself. The interplay between temporality at the project level and relative permanence at the relationship level forms the foundation of semi-temporary project networks for sustained innovation and collaboration across projects. This study has implications for project management literature, particularly on managing and organizing projects for societal impact, as well as for practitioners and municipalities interested in knowing which roles lead to effective smart city implementation.