# Knowledge Mapping Analysis of Intelligent Ports: Research Facing Global Value Chain Challenges
## 4 Discussion and Conclusions
### Prototyping Ecosystem Innovation Surrounding Intelligent Ports  
The alignment of stakeholders is the key roadmapping question in the present research. Digital technologies, especially in conjunction with the use of ESG and carbon emission data, can serve as the main resources of such an alignment. This section presents the results of the application of the socio-technical perspective [(35; 36; 37)] because of the various aspects of ecosystem innovations. Based on the empirical and theoretical literature of intelligent ports, ecosystem innovations surrounding intelligent ports can, thus, be prototyped as follows.  
By framing the findings using the framework of socio-technical transitions toward sustainability as multi-actor, long-term, goal-oriented, contested, disruptive, and nonlinear processes [(35; 36; 37)], this study goes beyond the twin green and digital transition of ports in transforming themselves. It starts by discussing the viable business ecosystems, and concludes with an MVE [(29)]. Thus, advancing the positive impacts of the movement of goods and people, in general, becomes the ultimate goal of sustainable smart ports, which requires ecosystem innovations. The knowledge mapping findings provide empirical evidence to discuss which system innovations can be designed to advance the practice and knowledge of smart ports, especially their potential to achieve sustainable development goals and carbon neutrality. Seen from the viewpoint of business models for minimum viable ecosystems, sustainable and smart ports can contribute with valuable data and information that add to the twin green and digital transition of global supply chains.  
This study found that the intellectual legacy of IoT and environmental impact research demands system integration at the different levels of devices, logistics information, networks, systems, or application ecosystems. The integration, thus, requires the design of overall performance indicators to include the carbon and ESG information associated with the port operations and with the goods and services they manage. Ultimately, ports manage the flow of goods and services and increase the flow of information. Among these various types of information, carbon and ESG information has yet to be integrated into a dominant innovation design of systematic changes for green smart ports. For instance, the issues of trust, transparency, and traceability of cargo and cargo data, as discussed by [PERSON] et al. [(83)] in relation to its crowdsourcing blockchain innovation platform, have great potential to embed ESG and carbon information, including the carbon footprints of associatedservices and products. Furthermore, the work by [PERSON] et al. [85] evaluating ports and their respective intelligence and greenness components, demonstrates multiple analytical opportunities in understanding, analyzing, evaluating and, thus, building green and smart ports, with multidimensional and systematic considerations. Both studies promise useful and innovative design interventions regarding the carbon and ESG information provided and intermediated by ports as important gatekeeping nodes of global value chains.  
To revive the intellectual legacy of decision-making in smart port planning and strategy, information-rich and -enabled, or data-driven decisions, best practices, and standards should be developed. Such a development can benefit from the socio-technical transitions incorporating ESG and carbon information into the logistics, including the mainstreaming of the carbon or GHG emissions data platform, with sustainable smart ports as the platform technology, or even as data curators and providers. The key to success is, therefore, the notion of ecosystem innovations based on reliable intelligence and analytics.