Category: Events

Giacomo Dei, a PhD candidate at the POLIMI School of Management of Politecnico di Milano, has been awarded the Ronald B. Shuman Award at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2025 for a study on how historical narratives influence decision-making in major infrastructure projects.

The Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management is the world’s leading event for advancing research in management and organisations. Each year, it brings together thousands of scholars to share knowledge, foster networks, and address the key challenges of the 21st century. 

At the 2025 edition held in Copenhagen, Giacomo Dei, PhD candidate at the POLIMI School of Management of Politecnico di Milano, received the prestigious Ronald B. Shuman Award for the Best Student Paper of the Management History Division. The award was granted for his contribution, “The Battle of Narratives: How outsiders create pasts to shape Fehmarn Belt Link’s prospects”, co-authored with Joana Geraldi and Giorgio Locatelli. 

The research addresses a crucial issue for the planning and governance of large-scale infrastructure projects: how external actors (such as the media, interest groups and political parties) construct historical narratives to guide current decisions and shape future project outcomes. The case study focuses on the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link, the immersed tunnel that will connect Denmark and Germany, but the findings provide practical insights for managing, governing, and communicating complex projects in a variety of contexts. 

Three key levers emerge for the strategic management of stakeholders: 

1. Continuity: framing the project within recognised historical trajectories (e.g., European integration, territorial connectivity) strengthens the legitimacy of investment decisions and project planning. 

1. Lessons learned: selectively drawing on past experiences (e.g., financing models, governance structures, environmental mitigation) allows potential bottlenecks to be anticipated and contracts, permits and interfaces along the supply chain to be adjusted. 

1. Recurring patterns: identifying in advance common scenarios (delays, cost overruns, disputes) enables the proactive design of countermeasures. 

The key message is that narratives are an integral part of project architecture. Mapping who communicates what becomes a strategic activity in itself, translating into scenarios, communication milestones, measurable success criteria, and contracts that incorporate transparency, data and environmental monitoring requirements. The aim is not to impose a single dominant narrative, but to orchestrate multiple voices so that the project gains support from all stakeholders. 

This recognition highlights the scientific excellence of the POLIMI School of Management and its ability to generate knowledge that supports strategic decision-making in complex contexts. 

From 4 to 7 August 2025, the international conference organised by the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society (TEMS) took place in San Diego, CA. TEMSCON Global 2025 is a global reference point for research and practice in technology management, leadership, and innovation.

In this renowned setting, Francesco Alessandro Cuzzola, researcher at the POLIMI School of Management, received the Best Paper Award for his study “Mitigating Demand Fluctuations in Long Supply Chains Through Dataspaces”, which he wrote with his co-authors Marco Taisch and Walter Quadrini.

The research, conducted as part of the MAASive project, aimed to develop models and technological solutions to support businesses and value chains in adopting Manufacturing as a Service approaches to strengthen their resilience. The research analysed the problem of demand fluctuations in complex supply chains, known as the bullwhip effect.

Using a simplified linear simulator, the study compares two scenarios:

• one with limited transparency, in which supply chain partners have partial information;
• one with total transparency, made possible by adopting dataspace technologies that enable real-time data sharing.

The results show that the transparency enabled by dataspaces significantly reduces both demand amplification and inventory fluctuations throughout the supply chain.

This recognition confirms the POLIMI School of Management’s leading role in international research on innovation management and technologies for future businesses once again.

The research proposal by Davide Moiana and Antonio Ghezzi, focused on coordination mechanisms in venture studios, received the Best Proposal Award at the first European edition of the SEJ-ESSEC Paper Development Workshop.

At the 2025 edition of the SEJ-ESSEC Paper Development Workshop, held in Paris, the research project from the POLIMI School of Management of Politecnico di Milano by Davide Moiana and Antonio Ghezzi received the Best Proposal Award. The proposal focuses on coordination in the startup creation processes within venture studios.

Organized by the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, one of the leading international journals in the fields of entrepreneurship and strategy, in collaboration with ESSEC Business School, the workshop was held in Europe for the first time. The initiative brought together scholars from around the world to present and discuss early-stage research projects, fostering scientific dialogue and the development of innovative contributions in the fields of strategy and entrepreneurship.

In this stimulating environment, the proposal by Davide Moiana and Antonio Ghezzi stood out for its potential. Their work examines the complex dynamics of coordinating experimentation activities within venture studios, an emerging entrepreneurial model in which an organization acts as both co-founder and investor, providing strategic and operational support for the development of a portfolio of startups. The goal is to shed light on the mechanisms that enable these organizations to manage serial entrepreneurial processes while maintaining strategic coherence and operational effectiveness.

The jury, composed of ESSEC faculty members and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal editors Sam Garg, Yong Li, and Pinar Ozcan, recognized the originality of the approach and the potential impact of the project, encouraging the team to further develop it with a view to future submission to a scientific journal. Following this important achievement, Davide Moiana and Antonio Ghezzi will continue to advance their research.

The award not only highlights the academic excellence of the POLIMI School of Management, but also underscores its ability to make a significant contribution to the global debate on strategic entrepreneurship and new organizational models for startup creation.

David Heller, researcher at the POLIMI School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, was awarded the “Best Paper Award” and the “European Investment Fund Best Paper Award on Policy Impact” at the ENTFIN Conference 2025 for two of his pioneering studies on the role of Generative AI in business productivity and the impact of public policies on startup internationalization.

At the 9th Annual Meeting of the Entrepreneurial Finance Association (ENTFIN), held from July 2 to 4, 2025, at Erasmus University Rotterdam, David Heller, researcher at the POLIMI School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, was awarded the Best Paper Award and the European Investment Fund Best Paper Award on Policy Impact.

The ENTFIN conference is a prestigious international event that brings together scholars interested in entrepreneurial finance from different fields in management, finance, and economics. The aim of the ENTFIN Association is to provide a platform for developing cooperation between academics and practitioners interested in the field of entrepreneurial finance and its applications, in particular, to stimulate high quality research between entrepreneurial finance scholars.

During the 2025 edition, David Heller received two prestigious recognitions for his studies on the implications of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) on firm-level productivity and the effects of government-funded accelerator programs on startups’ internationalization efforts.

The “Best Paper Award” was granted for Heller’s contribution on “Generative AI and Firm-level Productivity: Evidence from Startup Funding Dynamics”, co-authored with Dominik Asam (full article accessible here). This paper provides first large-scale evidence on the productivity effects of Generative AI in organizations. To study this, it exploits the release of GitHub Copilot in 2021 as a quasi-natural experiment and shows that software developing startups obtained initial external funding significantly faster (+19%) and with significantly fewer employed software developers (-20%). Yet, to elicit these results startups must be led by highly experienced founders, demonstrating that GenAI can have significant productivity gains, but it requires complementary human capital to appropriate these returns.

The European Investment Fund Best Paper Award on Policy Impact was awarded to Heller for the study “Learning from Abroad? Startup Accelerators and International Market Entry” (co-authored with Daehyun Kim and Dietmar Harhoff). The study examines internationalization efforts of startups, a key strategy for many entrepreneurial ventures today, by leveraging a unique dataset that combines proprietary application data from the German Accelerator (GA) – a government-financed program designed to support startups’ international market entry – with detailed startup-level, founder, and investment information. The analysis shows that participating startups significantly raised funding and hired more employees in the GA’s target countries. However, these effects are muted for startups that took part in online programs that were introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the results are strongest among startups whose founders had limited international experience prior to participating. This way, the study advances the understanding of the potential and limitations of startup accelerators in supporting international market entry.

The awards received confirm the scientific value and practical relevance of the research conducted, and reaffirm the contribution of the POLIMI School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano to advancing knowledge in entrepreneurial finance, innovation policy, and the transformative potential of emerging technologies.