Paolo Gerli
paolo gerli

Dr Paolo Gerli

Lecturer

Biography

Paolo joined Napier University Business School in March 2021, as a Lecturer of Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

He holds a PhD in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Strategy from Northumbria University, where he has also been as a Lecturer of Digital Enterprise from 2018 to 2021. Prior to joining academia, Paolo worked as a regulatory analyst for both private and public organisations in the Italian telecommunications sector.

His professional background reflects in his research, which revolves around business strategies and public policies for the digital transformation of the economy and society. His scholarly work has particularly focused on the development of smart places for the digital transformation of urban and rural communities. Paolo has also contributed to several consultancy projects exploring the governance of smart cities, and is now working on the World Smart City Outlook, which will inform the UN-Habitat Guidelines on People-Centered Smart Cities.

Since 2016, Paolo's research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences. In 2019, he was among the recipients of the Pacific Telecommunications Council Young Scholar Programme, an award for early-career researchers of ICT markets and policies.

Esteem

Advisory panels and expert committees or witness

  • Contribution to a JRC policy report on data intermediaries
  • Academic Consultant (Governance of Smart City Projects), United Nations
  • Academic Consultant (Governance of Smart City Projects), CAF - the Development Bank of Latin America
  • RSA close session for ECRs meeting with the EU Commissioner on Regional Cohesion
  • EIP- Agri seminar on Multi-level strategies for digitising agriculture and rural areas

 

Conference Organising Activity

  • International Telecommunications 麻豆社区 European Conference

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
  • Richard Beresford Bursary - Enterprise Educators UK
  • Pacific Telecommunications Council Young Scholar Program
  • ITS PhD seminar - travel grant

 

Invited Speaker

  • Invited talk at the UN-Habitat Community of Practice on Harnessing the Power of Connected Communities through Urban-Rural Linkages
  • Invited Talk at the 3rd International Forum on Urban-Rural Linkages (UN Habitat and People鈥檚 Government of Songyang County, China).
  • Invited talk at the UN-Habitat Expert Group Meeting : Recovering Territorial Balance by Strengthening Urban-Rural Linkages
  • Invited talk at Theorizing AI Workshop - Luiss University, Rome
  • Keynote at Smart City Expo: Global study on smart city governance
  • Invited talk at Technological Forecasting Social Change Workshop on Post-pandemic Smart Cities, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore
  • Guest Lecture on Rural Digital Entrepreneurship for the Bandung Institute of Technology
  • Guest Lecture on the regulation of electronic communications, Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan)
  • Invited talk at Agriconnect, the Italian Convention on Digital Agriculture

 

Media Activity

  • North Edinburgh News: Edinburgh Napier researchers launch 鈥榮mart city playbook鈥 for United Nations
  • The Scotsman: Smart thinking that deploys digital technology can make our cities fit for the future
  • UK Authority: 麻豆社区 develops smart city playbook
  • Future Scot: New global smart cities playbook developed by researchers in Edinburgh
  • Smart Cities World: UN and Napier collaborate on smart city governance playbook
  • Project Scotland: 麻豆社区 creates smart city 鈥榩laybook鈥 for UN
  • Smart places: Why getting the governance right is vital to project success
  • Wired UK: Faster Home Broadband Should Be Enshrined in Law
  • Wired UK: The race to get the UK using fibre optic broadband is speeding up
  • Wired UK: The Conservatives鈥 own research shows why Labour鈥檚 broadband plan makes perfect sense
  • Pacific Telecommunications Council Blog: Digital in rural areas
  • ISP Review: New UK Research Paper on Delivering Faster Rural Broadband
  • Agriconnect: superare il divario digitale nelle zone rurali; agire in tempi rapidi
  • Agriconnect 2017: banda ultra larga nelle aree rurali

 

Membership of Professional Body

  • Member of the European Regional Science Association
  • Member of the Regional Study Association
  • Member and Social Media Manager of the International Telecommunications 麻豆社区

 

Public/Community Engagement

  • Oor Smart Ceeties: public engagement workshops on the digital future of Scottish cities

 

Reviewing

  • Reviewer for Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Nature)
  • Reviewer for Information Policy
  • Reviewer for Universal Access in the Information 麻豆社区
  • Book reviewer for Sage
  • Reviewer for Journal of Urban Technology
  • Reviewer for Public Policy and Administration
  • Reviewer for Regional Studies
  • Reviewer for Habitat International
  • Reviewer for Technological Forecasting and Social Change
  • Reviewer for Technology Analysis & Strategic Management
  • Reviewer for Government Information Quarterly
  • Reviewer for Information Polity
  • Book reviewer for Springer
  • Reviewer for Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance
  • Reviewer for Telecommunications Policy

 

Date


21 results

Confronting the smart city governance challenge

Journal Article
Mora, L., Gerli, P., Batty, M., Binet Royall, E., Carfi, N., Coenegrachts, K.-F., de Jong, M., Facchina, M., Janssen, M., Meijer, A., Pasi, G., Perrino, M., Raven, R., Sagar, A., Sancino, A., Santi, P., Sharp, D., Trencher, G., van Zoonen, L., Westerberg, P., 鈥iemer, G. (online)
Confronting the smart city governance challenge. Nature Cities, https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00168-9
Governance inefficiencies threaten the potential of smart city projects to deliver equitable urban transformations. Current strategies often hinder implementation, and risk ha...

Scaling to new heights: methodological insights for uplifting research on grassroots digital innovation

Journal Article
Gerli, P., Neves da Rocha, F., & Mora, L. (2025)
Scaling to new heights: methodological insights for uplifting research on grassroots digital innovation. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, Article 126. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-04320-7
The Covid-19 pandemic has further evidenced the potential of grassroots actors as initiators of digital innovations, in the form of open-source applications, platform cooperat...

World Smart Cities Outlook 2024

Report
Gerli, P., Mora, L., Neves Da Rocha, F., & Nguyen, H. (2024)
World Smart Cities Outlook 2024. United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat
The World Smart Cities Outlook 2024 provides a comprehensive analysis of the current state of people-centred smart city development globally. Serving as a foundational referen...

Building a Good Digital 麻豆社区 from the Grassroots: Harnessing the Tradition of Community-led Initiatives in the Governance of Digital Services and Infrastructures

Report
Gerli, P. (2024)
Building a Good Digital 麻豆社区 from the Grassroots: Harnessing the Tradition of Community-led Initiatives in the Governance of Digital Services and Infrastructures. British Academy
Over the past two decades, community broadband networks, platform cooperatives, and data cooperatives have emerged as promising models to counterbalance market distortions and...

Co鈥恈onstructing cooperative value ecosystems: A critical realist perspective

Journal Article
Zhang, J., Zamani, E. D., Gerli, P., & Mora, L. (2025)
Co鈥恈onstructing cooperative value ecosystems: A critical realist perspective. Information Systems Journal, 35(2), 504-544. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12549
This study focuses on digital platform cooperatives (DPCs) and investigates how social value is created within platform cooperativism for fostering a more equitable and inclus...

Friends or enemies? Unraveling niche-regime interactions in grassroots digital innovations

Journal Article
Gerli, P., Mora, L., Zhang, J., & Sancino, A. (2024)
Friends or enemies? Unraveling niche-regime interactions in grassroots digital innovations. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 202, Article 123342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2024.123342
During the COVID-19 pandemic, grassroots digital innovations (GDIs) have gained traction as innovation niches, providing an alternative to the prevailing mainstream regime dom...

Managing smart city governance: A playbook for local and regional governments

Report
Beckers, D., Gerli, P., Mora, L., Thabit, S., & Tonnarelli, F. (2023)
Managing smart city governance: A playbook for local and regional governments. Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat
This playbook and its recommendations are primarily aimed at municipal governments and their political leaders, local administrators, and public officials who are involved in ...

Global Review of Smart City Governance Practices

Report
Beckers, D., Gerli, P., Mora, L., Thabit, S., & Tonnarelli, F. (2022)
Global Review of Smart City Governance Practices. Nairobi: United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat
Through smart city initiatives, digital technologies are increasingly applied in cities to modernize city operations and transform service delivery. The ongoing digital transf...

Digital entrepreneurship in a rural context: the implications of the rural-urban digital divide

Book Chapter
Gerli, P., & Whalley, J. (2022)
Digital entrepreneurship in a rural context: the implications of the rural-urban digital divide. In M. Keyhani, T. Kollmann, A. Ashjari, A. Sorgner, & C. Hull (Eds.), Handbook of Digital Entrepreneurship (291-305). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800373631.00026
Digital technologies are expected to encourage entrepreneurship by making it less spatially bounded, but there is increasing evidence that digital entrepreneurship remains geo...

The impact of Brexit on the digitisation of rural areas in the UK

Book Chapter
Gerli, P., & Whalley, J. (2022)
The impact of Brexit on the digitisation of rural areas in the UK. In A. Attorp, S. Heron, & R. McAreavey (Eds.), Rural Governance in the UK (162-179). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003200208-9
This chapter discusses new policymaking scenarios in rural broadband and digital services that have opened now that the UK is no longer subject to the EU regulatory framework ...

Pre-Napier Funded Projects

  • ESRC Accelerating Business Collaboration
  • Consultancy for Telus inc. on the benefits of rural digital transformation

Current Post Grad projects