Youth in Pentahelix Collaboration Towards a Smart Village

Abstract

The industrial revolution 4.0 has triggered significant changes in various sectors, including at the rural level. One response to these changes is the implementation of the Smart Village concept, which emphasizes information technology-based village governance. Realizing a smart village requires human resources with specific skills, which are often difficult to find in villages. Therefore, the involvement of various actors through the pentahelix collaboration scheme, which includes the government, academia, businesses, the community, and the media, is crucial. Youth, as the digital native generation, have a central role in driving this transformation. This research aims to analyze how a pentahelix collaboration works in the development of a smart village in Bira Village, Indonesia, as well as explore the role of youth in the collaboration. Bira Village was chosen as the research location because it has undergone a digitalization process over the past few years. The method used was descriptive qualitative, with interviews and document studies as the main techniques of data collection. The research adopted a framework that includes six smart village dimensions, namely smart people, smart economy, smart environment, smart governance, smart mobility, and smart living, to achieve the research objectives. The results show that a pentahelix collaboration is strongest in the smart people and smart economy dimensions. In other dimensions, collaboration does exist, but it does not optimally involve all stakeholders. The role of youth is highly visible in the smart people, smart governance, and smart economy dimensions, but less prominent in the other dimensions.