28 Nov 2025
On Wednesday 26 November 2025, IBSS hosted Professor Luca Mora for a research seminar and roundtable that left many of us quietly rethinking what we really mean by a “smart city”.
With the title From Science to International Policy Development: Ten Years of Research to Reframe Technology Governance for Smart City Innovation, Professor Mora didn’t give us a tech fanfare about sensors and gadgets. Instead, he focused on something far less glamorous but far more important: how we govern digital transformation so that it genuinely creates “public value”.
Professor Mora
As Professor of Urban Innovation at Edinburgh Napier University, Head of the Department (of Entrepreneurship and Innovation), Founding Director of the Urban Innovation Policy Lab, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Technological Forecasting and Social Change, he brought serious academic weight – but also a refreshingly down-to-earth way of talking about complex issues.
Smart cities: more than shiny technology
Professor Mora started from the basic reality facing cities today: rapid urbanisation, rising inequality, climate pressures and public services under strain. Smart city projects, he argued, should be judged not by how futuristic they look, but by whether they improve people’s lives in ethical, inclusive and “sustainable” ways.
Much of his work feeds into the United Nations’ People-Centred Smart Cities programme, which aims to help national and local governments manage digital transitions responsibly. Drawing on a global survey of 250 municipalities across five continents, he showed that while many cities are experimenting with technologies, far fewer have robust governance frameworks, clear strategies or strong citizen involvement and engagement.
His main point was simple: a city doesn’t become “smart” just by buying advanced or sophisticated technology. It becomes smart when it has the institutions, rules and partnerships in place to use technology wisely.
From government to governance
A recurring theme was the shift from traditional government to broader governance. Rather than the state (i.e., local government) acting alone, smart city innovation should involve a network of actors such as public institutions, universities, businesses, NGOs and citizens.
The role of government, in this new model, is less about doing everything itself and more about “orchestrating” collaboration. That includes setting standards, ensuring accountability and creating spaces where different stakeholders can work together instead of competing in silos.
Professor Mora also warned against “pilot project syndrome” – the tendency to launch eye-catching experiments that look good on paper or in a press release but never quite become part of everyday institutional practice. The real task is to embed digital transformation into long-term strategies, legal frameworks and organisational cultures.
Think local, start small, scale
One of the most memorable lines of the afternoon could easily serve as a guiding principle for cities anywhere:
“Think local, start small, scale”.
Rather than “copy and pasting” fashionable “smart” solutions from elsewhere, cities need to understand their own context: local institutions, power dynamics, culture, and everyday realities. A technology that thrives in Northern Europe may fail completely in a different regulatory or social environment.
Professor Mora illustrated this with examples where relatively simple technologies (or low-cost business models) made a real difference precisely because they were tailored to local needs (for example, ‘radio schools’ in Nigeria). In this sense, “smartness” is less about how advanced the technology is, and more about how well it fits the people and place it serves.
The subsequent roundtable brought the discussion closer to home. Colleagues and students explored what people-centred smart city governance might mean for Suzhou and the Yangtze River Delta, and where a business school like IBSS can add value.
As we left the seminar room, the takeaway was clear, if we want truly smart cities, we should start not with platforms, apps or dashboards, but with people, institutions and the sometimes untidy business of governing well. The technology, as Professor Mora reminded us, is only ever part of the story.
28 Nov 2025