The more the better? The role of stakeholder information processing in complex urban innovation projects for green transformation

To fight climate change and to cope with the energy crisis, a green and sustainable transformation of the existing urban space is needed. Key for the increase of a city districts’ energy efficiency is the successful management of urban innovation projects. Urban innovation projects target heterogeneous innovation fields like heat supply, thermal insulation, mobility, and smart city approaches. They cover various technological and social innovations, affect almost all areas of urban life and economy, and, hence, need to involve heterogonous stakeholders. As such, urban innovation projects are more complex than many other projects, which results in difficulties of the implementation of the innovations alternatives in the local urban environment. This study focuses on the role of stakeholder involvement breadth and depth to foster the likelihood of implementation of new solutions in urban innovation projects. We ask how information processing capabilities affect the efficacy of stakeholder involvement. The empirical analysis provides evidence based on text mining of planning documents and survey data from 106 German urban innovation projects. The results reveal the benefits and challenges of stakeholder involvement and show how digital tools may help to overcome information processing obstacles.