The purpose of this study is to build a typology of knowledge generation institutions of a smart city in a digital economy, based on identifying the relationship between the effectiveness of generating new knowledge and digital resources in a smart city in a digital economy. A measure of the quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of the generation of new knowledge in the digital economy - “Digital Speed” is proposed. The proposed indicator is a quantitative indicator characterizing the increase in the effectiveness of knowledge generation with an increase in the use of a digital resource by 1%. Secondly, the author conducted a correlation analysis, which allowed to identify the factors of the digital economy that influence the processes of knowledge generation in a smart city. Digital speeds of increase in the efficiency of generation of various types of new knowledge are calculated depending on the various types of use of digital resources. Based on the correlation dependencies calculated by the author and digital rates of new knowledge generation by industrial enterprises of a smart city in a digital economy, the author has built a typology of knowledge generation institutes of a smart city in a digital economy. Sustained, effective institutions have been identified, the further development of which will increase the effectiveness of the processes of generating new knowledge of a smart city in the digital economy. The author concludes that the application of the principles and ideas of the institutional modeling of the knowledge generation processes of a smart city makes it possible to form full-fledged prognostic models of using socio-technological drivers for the development of smart cities in the digital economy.