Category: Events

Entrepreneurial Strategy: how to navigate the new pandemic and digital normal

Posted on | by Marta Re Ferrè | Leave a Comment on Entrepreneurial Strategy: how to navigate the new pandemic and digital normal

Entrepreneurship arises from the recognition of an explicit or hidden problem, often from exogenous shocks. But an entrepreneurial mindset is not enough: it needs an overall strategy, a framework and the tools to navigate this new pandemic and digital normal. In the end, it is a process based on a scientific and experimental approach.

 

Antonio Ghezzi, Associate Professor of Strategy & Marketing, Hi-tech Startups and Digital Business Innovation
School of Management Politecnico di Milano

 

Entrepreneurship is commonly defined as a constant search for new business opportunities.

What’s an opportunity? Opportunities can arise when exogenous shocks reveal competitive imperfections which leave some space open for intervention and action. They might also happen when resources and competencies, owned by you or some else, appear or acquire a new value (such as when they are recombined to deliver a new solution or when old problems are resolved in new ways). Sometimes, opportunities are created by visionary minds who challenge common assumptions or who see a light in the darkness.

How do you take advantage of an opportunity once it is discovered or created?

Taking advantage of an opportunity involves creating new organisations. These may be traditional new ventures or more highly innovative start-ups, which build viable business models around the business opportunities. Entrepreneurs must formulate an entrepreneurial strategy, by: defining their vision, mission and purpose; creatively analysing industries, looking within and outside traditional market boundaries using a Blue Ocean Strategy or using a lean start approach by designing innovative business models and validating them on the market by acquiring customer feedback through experimentation.

These are the main entrepreneurial steps, which make it a restless force that challenges and creates traditional industries, and constitutes the major growth thrust in mature economies like Italy’s.

What is the relationship between today’s mega trends and exogenous conditions and entrepreneurship? How do the “new normal”, born of a fast-spreading pandemic and a growing digitalisation trend, affect entrepreneurial action? And can entrepreneurial action help overcome current threats?

Entrepreneurship is born and naturally thrives in uncertain market conditions and turbulence. New ventures and start-ups either emerge from discontinuities or create them, through disruptive initiatives and business models. You need an entrepreneurial mindset when sailing troubled waters.

Entrepreneurship is about turning threats into opportunities. As a common saying goes, in entrepreneurship everything starts with “pain” which is the recognition of an explicit or hidden problem, that the entrepreneurial team strives to solve in an original and effective or efficient way. This is something we clearly experienced when investigating start-up responses to the COVID-19 crisis. Not only did several start-ups perform interesting pivots of their business models to restore viability, but others were created to help overcome the crisis.

Entrepreneurship constantly looks to design and bundle new tools into compelling value propositions that can rapidly scale. This is the case with digital technologies, which display a strategic and entrepreneurial side beyond their technological dimension and should be seen as enablers for new products, services, business models and whole industries.

Embracing an entrepreneurial mindset to catalyse entrepreneurial action and make it practical within an overall entrepreneurial strategy provides the framework and tools to navigate the new pandemic and digital normal. This applies to start-ups and innovative projects inside well-established organisations, where “intrapreneurial” endeavours are needed for business renewal.

At Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management, our close ties with the Italian and international startup ecosystem allow us to design theoretically sound as well as practice-oriented research, and convey its main takeaways into an enriching and action-learning teaching experience.

This theory-teaching-practice virtuous loop allowed us to address a key point often puzzling would-be entrepreneurs: entrepreneurship can be taught and learnt.

Entrepreneurship is not only about individual creativity and passion: it’s a process based on and sustained by an experimental and quasi-scientific approach that can be framed and transferred.

Will learning this process result in a bulletproof recipe for undisputable success? For sure it won’t. But whenever going through the famous – or better, infamous – startup’s Valley of Death, with failure rates as high as 90%, be knowledgeable of the right models and approaches will definitely come in handy.

 

Disruption? No, thanks. Innovation and Leadership in the New Normal

Posted on | by Marta Re Ferrè | Leave a Comment on Disruption? No, thanks. Innovation and Leadership in the New Normal

Whatever the post-Covid future, the new normal will require a fundamental change in the leadership of companies. What kind of mentality should leaders have to do business and innovation in a world that will be completely different? In a period in which the temptation will be to be increasingly competitive due to the scarce resources available, learning to share may be the only strategy that can guarantee survival.

 

Roberto Verganti, Professor of Leadership and Innovation
School of Management Politecnico di Milano, Stockholm School of Economics, Harvard Business School

 

Many executives wonder about a fundamental question: how to get ready for the “new normal”? How markets will look like when the main wave(s) of the Covid-19 pandemic will recede? How to redesign products, services and operations to address potential structural shifts?

The start line to rethink how we operate is getting close. Those who get ready now, will start with the right foot. Those who wait, will look like dinosaurs from an old era (though that era was just a few months earlier).

Magazines, futurists, consultants, organizations. Everyone is trying to picture how the scenario will look like as people open up their doors to a new normal life. And everyone agrees on two things: first, the world will look different than before. Second, this transformation will not be temporary. Even when Covid-19 will be fully defeated (and hopefully it will be), our attitude towards socialization, our openness towards the world, our need for health (and anxiety for new infections), will be radically different, for the bad, but also for the good.

Yet, as we move closer and try to get into the details of how life will look like, how markets and operations will work, the real challenge emerges: the phenomenon we are facing is so unprecedented, disproportioned, and swift that capturing the essence of what will happen is implausible. A simple figure to explain the rapidity and magnitude of the discontinuity: in March 2020 more than 7 million Americans have filed for jobless claims per week. This is about tenfold compared to what happened during the financial crisis in 2008. So, regardless to the intelligence and effort we invest to predict what will happen, we need to admit that the answer to the question “how the world will look like?” is: no one really knows. This is a bit of a dismay for the classic way we picture leaders (and experts), who are supposedly those who always know. Yet, in this context, “pretending to know” is the most dramatic mistake we could do.

Amy Edmondson illustrates in her book The Fearless Organization that when a person admits that she does not know, then she opens the doors to learning. To understand how to do business in the new normal the mindset we need therefore is not to guess how it will be, but to get prepared to learn.

How? Being the context completely new, we cannot rely on past experience. We will need to learn “on the fly” through continuous experiments and adaptation. There are two ways to experiment and learn: by competing (learning by trying) or by collaborating (learning by sharing).

Learn by Trying. This the classic way of learning. The purpose here is to learn by yourself in order to beat your competitors. In this approach, organizations compete by conducting different experiments. Each organization tries its own ideas, fail, learn, adjusts the direction, and iterate. As companies aim to disrupt their competitors, they do not share their findings and insights with other organizations, nor the data that fuel the learning. This implies that every time an organization has an idea, it needs to explore it by only relying on its own resources.

Learn by Sharing. In this approach organizations conduct again different experiments. They generate their own ideas and iterate. However, they share the data and findings of their experiments. Why? Because this way they can leverage the trials of other players. If an idea has already been tested, and fails, others can avoid this unpromising path and focus on other options. And if the idea succeeds, others can build on top of it, instead of having everyone starting from scratch. Of course, this path reduces distances among competitors. Disruptions with one big winner and many losers are less likely to happen. But the advantage, however, is that that this approach requires less resources (individual and collective) and less time to get to good solutions. This increase in overall productivity and speed facilitates the growth of demand for solutions, which fuels returns to each player. In other words, this mechanism of learning replicates the mechanisms of the prisoner’s dilemma: cooperation between players leads to higher yields than what players would earn if they would maximize their own individual returns.

Learn by Trying is the kind of learning that has been prized in the past decade by many innovation thinkers and epitomized by the motto “fail often to succeed sooner”. It worked as long as the environment changed rapidly but in a linear fashion, so that learning from one experiment could be applied to the next one without the context being changed dramatically meanwhile. The change we are facing now with Covid-19 is however discontinuous and unprecedented. If in this context everyone conducts experiment by itself, each player has not sufficient time to explore this uncharted space of solution and then iterate before the context evolves again.

To innovate in the new normal we need to learn by sharing. This strategy is the only one that can guarantee sufficient scope, speed and productivity of the experiments. In fact, data sharing enables a larger community of players to participate to the experiments, from a larger variety of settings. And the sharing of findings enables to avoid unproductive trials.

Learning by sharing is already practiced in scientific research connected to Covid-19. Foer example, PostEra, a start-up based in Santa Clara, CA, and London, UK, is coordinating a massive collaborative project, Covid Moonshot to rapidly develop effective and easy-to-make anti-Covid drugs. The focus of the project is to design inhibitors of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (the enzyme that enables the virus to replicate). The project leverages data shared by experiments conducted in a synchrotron radiation facility, Diamond Light Source, that has identified 80 fragments of molecules that might attach to the protease. A community of scientists and manufacturers use those data to design compound inhibitors, which are submitted through the PostEra website. The start-up then runs machine learning algorithms in the background to check for duplications and prioritize candidates for testing. More than 3’600 molecules designs have been submitted with only 32 duplications in the designs.

Shared learning is getting its way also in ordinary business not connected to Covid-19. Microsoft has recently launched an Open Data Campaign. The Open Data movement promotes the sharing of data, similarly to what Open Source does for sharing of software code. Microsoft will develop 20 new collaborations built around shared data by 2022, including, for example, publishing a Microsoft’s dataset around broadband usage in the US.

Note that shared learning does not imply that different players collaborate on the same idea or solution, like in consortia. On the contrary, organizations explore different ideas and experiments. This enables to explore the entire space of solutions. What is shared, instead, are the data that feed the experiments, and/or the insights and findings they generate.

Learning by sharing is built on a will to cooperate. Which is not easy to achieve. Especially in a period of scarce resources. The temptation is to look inward, and behave even more competitively, to secure the few things left, instead of focusing, collaboratively, on building more. What kind of culture and mindset will innovation leaders need to promote learning by sharing in their own organizations?

Whatever the future will look like, the new normal will require a fundamental change in the way we create innovation and lead our organizations. Whereas the innovation mantra of the pre-Covid era was to “disrupt competitors”, this is not really the moment to disrupt. This is rather the moment to collectively re-build a new economy and a new world. The real heroes, in business and society, will not be the disruptors, but those catalysts who will foster a cooperative mindset. Which, in innovation, it means to share data and learnings from the experiments everyone conducts. Organizations will need to try different competing ideas, but they will also benefit from sharing insights, in order to avoid unpromising avenues, improve collective productivity, and rapidly build a new society. Covid-19 is the moment of truth for leaders: where they can prove their authentic orientation to lead organizations around purpose and meaning.

KeepONLearning: the pandemic couldn’t stop us!

Posted on | by Beatrice Grillo | Leave a Comment on KeepONLearning: the pandemic couldn’t stop us!

KeepONLearning is reaching an end. Four months after it was launched at MIP Politecnico di Milano, the initiative devoted to continuous learning and directed at its stakeholders arrives at its natural conclusion, making way, in September, for the safe reopening of the campus. From March to July, KeepONLearning offered an uninterrupted flow of course content and in-depth study material to a vast community of students, businesses, teachers and partners, engaging top managers and professionals of the highest level on the international scene. This meant that not only were students able to continue on the courses on which they were enrolled, but that even businesses and partners had access to a range of material that, among other things, had the objective of providing tools useful for tackling the Covid-19 emergency.

Before launching KeepONLearning, in the last week in February, MIP began by moving all education online, in order to ensure the delivery of courses without interruption: not an easy feat, but made possible in part by the fact that MIP has already for years been focusing attention on digital learning.

Two weeks later, on 18 March, we launched KeepONLearning, in part thanks to the staff at MIP, who worked with enthusiasm and conviction towards the success of the initiative. Thus, a range of content was added to the MIP website and made available to our stakeholders: articles, webinars, online courses, talks with teachers and managers, operational tools, in-depth study material. A wide variety of information covering important subjects, such as smart working, the impact of Covid-19 on businesses and supply chains, the help that artificial intelligence can provide, the management of digital innovation during the emergency, even in a crucial sector, such as health, and much more besides that, with participation by multinationals, such as Microsoft, Lamborghini and Pirelli, and leading international figures, such as Carlo Cottarelli.

More than 90 live webinars organized recorded very high attendance, with over 20,000 participants. Thanks to KeepONLearning, the MIP website saw visits increase by over 60% compared to the same period in the previous year. These numbers reflect, on the one hand, MIP’s commitment to its mission of sharing knowledge to the benefit of its stakeholders and, on the other hand, the great need for up-to-date expertise in a very rapidly evolving global horizon.

The university is set to reopen in September, when MIP will once again welcome in its lecture halls and on campus, in complete safety, people from all over the world, ready to exchange innovative ideas and points of view. This time, the motto will be “Nice to MIP You”. This reopening will also carry with it the wealth of knowledge and discoveries gathered in these past months precisely thanks to KeepONLearning.

 

 

The future of business schools between innovation and entrepreneurship

Posted on | by Marta Re Ferrè | Leave a Comment on The future of business schools between innovation and entrepreneurship

International business schools are competing in a situation which is undergoing a profound and rapid transformation. The need for increasingly specialised managerial training, competition from new players and building a more inclusive and sustainable future, requires a rethink of operating and business models.
What are the transformations required for greater entrepreneurship and innovative capacity of business schools?

 

Federico Frattini, Dean MIP-Graduate School of Business, Politecnico di Milano

 

International business schools are competing in a situation which is undergoing a profound and rapid transformation. This requires a thorough rethink of business schools’ “standard” business and operating models.

Some of the trends that have recently emerged are the shift in demand for managerial training from “general management” programmes to “specialist” programmes, and stronger competition in the management training market owing to the entry of new players. Consulting and executive search companies are expanding their service to include training for the development of human capital. New “edtech” players are entering the training market, and global technology giants (e.g. Microsoft, Google, Amazon) and increasingly seeing the training world as a possible new frontier to sustain their growth.
The demand for life-long learning services is growing rapidly, due to the fast obsolescence of skills that are learned in “standard” management training courses. Extra-curricular activities and what we call “campus life” are becoming increasingly important in students’ choices. Finally, there is a “crisis” of academic institutions’ social value as they swiftly lose reputation, especially in the eyes of the younger generations.

In addition to these transformations, there are others that have been profoundly accelerated by the consequences of the Coronavirus health emergency. Business schools need to redefine their purpose and clarify their contribution toward building a more inclusive and sustainable future. But they cannot delay the start of a deep digitisation of their processes, teaching methods and approaches.

Responding to these challenges requires a profound rethink of business schools’ business model. Some of the relevant changes that should be carefully considered by international business schools’ leadership include moving from “disciplinary” to “transversal” skills, including entrepreneurship, digital skills, sustainability, critical thinking. There needs to be a move from “separate from practice” training models to “hands-on” training based on a growing interaction with managerial and entrepreneurial practice. Undifferentiated approaches for training for “homogeneous populations of students” need to move to “customised” training, in a “one-to-one” perspective from “intermittent” and time-concentrated training to “on-demand” training, and continuously mixed with students’ professional activity and private life. We need to move from Face-to-face vs. digital training to “omnichannel” training models. The focus on the production of knowledge through research and its transfer through a portfolio of training products must change to the research and integration of knowledge available outside the business school boundaries (for example availability of high-quality training content on MOOCs – Massive Online Open Courses platforms).

These transformations have a scope and potential impact that clash with the “bureaucratic” culture of business schools, their consensus-building processes, and governance mechanisms that require time to approve decisions fail to meet the above conditions. It is essential for international business schools’ leadership to promote a transformation of organisational culture, processes, staff skills, and organisational structures for greater entrepreneurship and innovative capacity. This means borrowing the management solutions and approaches which business schools teach and applying them to their management models. For example, to manage “radical” innovation projects, which require profound changes to established routines and operating models (e.g. the launch of distance learning platforms, or life-long learning services enabled by digital technologies), many business schools are creating spin-offs to place these projects in a more agile and entrepreneurial organisational background. Many business schools are creating positions among their Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) staff to promote a process of continuous digital innovation and transformation of operations and training. Coopetition models in business schools are becoming widespread. These aim at reaching a higher critical mass and sharing the risks and costs that radical innovation projects entail (such as the development of innovative Learning Management Systems).

Many of these transformations will take time to manifest in the world of business schools, but they will be fundamental to sustain their competitiveness over time and ensure their survival.

Being entrepreneurial in a high-tech world

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We talk with Andrea Sianesi, Executive Chairman PoliHub, Innovation District and Startup Accelerator Politecnico di Milano
Professor of Logistics and Production Systems Management, School of Management

 

Andrea, you are in charge of an incubator, so you embrace new business ideas which are still in development. What characteristics does a good entrepreneur have at this moment in history?

Firstly courage. This is the same answer I would have given before the Covid-19 crisis. Entrepreneurial initiative is a leap into the void and committing resources and time to develop ideas requires a cool head.
In addition to courage, I believe correcting one’s mistakes and make the most of the “obstacles” along the way is fundamental.

There is a need to have technical and technological knowledge about your enterprise. The entrepreneur who goes through PoliHub, has a solid technological expertise, but lacks business world knowledge. Entrepreneurs must be open to partnerships with other people who can bring complementary skills to the company, such as the ability to develop the market, or knowledge of the regulatory framework.
One must always be willing to get help.

PoliHub is a university incubator: why does the university need it?

The university ecosystem is a fundamental asset for those who want to do business. At Politecnico di Milano, we guarantee access to the business school, POLI.design and Cefriel innovation hubs, thousands of professors and researchers, laboratories covering engineering disciplines, and which are fundamental for transforming an idea into a product.

We are not just a place that hosts start-ups, we are unique compared to other incubators. In deep tech start-ups, it is necessary to carry out experimental activities in laboratories that are only found in universities, and there are companies that, following technological developments in different sectors, have detached some of their departments to join us. This allows them to work and interact with start-ups and have the same ease of access to the entire hub.

This makes the difference and the figures confirm it. Let me give you an example: Politecnico di Milano’s PoliHub, together with the Technology Transfer Office (TTO), manages the “Switch To Product” competition every year. This programme enhances the market value of innovative solutions, new technologies and business ideas suggested by students and graduates (up to three years after graduation), researchers, alumni and professors of Politecnico di Milano, offering financial resources and consulting services to support the development of innovation projects through technological validation and entrepreneurial acceleration. This year we saw a 20 per cent increase in applications. This is an incredibly significant growth, which gives us hope for an increase in new successful companies.

Covid-19 has turned the tables and changed boundaries and business ecosystems, with short or long-term effects, what have you noticed about this situation?

Recently we feared that the pandemic could wipe out the start-up world as they were unable to access forms of subsidy available to other business and professional categories. The problem is real: start-ups today find themselves in greater difficulty than companies that are already well established, but for the moment the system is holding up and showing encouraging signs.

An unexpected effect has been an increase in demand to access incubation services. There is a strong demand to enter the business world, perhaps due to the realisation that it is necessary to know how to get back into the game, even for those who have a well-established career, creating new income opportunities where job stability is lacking.

The demand increase for services comes not only from potential start-ups, but established companies, who decide to relocate to smaller and leaner offices located next to centres of excellence. This new trend is perhaps facilitated by the spread of smart working, which makes it easier to manage small offices than larger ones.

You are describing a scenario with different opportunities on the horizon. What are Polihub’s future plans?

The challenge for us is to find resources that can accompany the start-ups from the idea, and the university, with its resources related to European projects and grants, funds and investors willing to support them throughout their growth phase.

I like to picture the process as crossing a valley. Start-ups need a “bridge” between the two phases that allows them to have the necessary resources to make their idea interesting for investors.
For the idea to be interesting it needs to prove that it is solid and technically verified and has a target market.

Often the technical tests already require considerable investment and are lengthy. We are committed to making this “bridge” effective, and as short as possible, compared to the objectives.

Our future project is to find institutional investors and venture capital, but with a wide-ranging international approach and not just a domestic exposure for our start-ups.
We think with an international logic, not only financially, but using every asset made available by the global network of incubators of excellence.

We are certain that pooling these capabilities will enable us to make a real difference.

 

 

Bootcamps at MIP: what they are and what to expect

Posted on | by Beatrice Grillo | Leave a Comment on Bootcamps at MIP: what they are and what to expect

First of all, I have to say that I have seen the light…! My Part-time MBA adventure is getting closer to the end and I’m really excited about what this last kilometer will be like. While I am developing one of my last group assignments and at the same time, my final project work, I would like to recollect one of the most meaningful experiences of this tiring, crazy but outstanding voyage.

Almost a year ago I decided to apply to one of the several Bootcamps we could choose from, which were included in our MBA program.

But what exactly is a Bootcamp? It is 30 hours of face-to-face classes focused on a particular topic and designed specifically to create a link between theory and practice.

Besides, the one you choose (I picked “Luxury & Made in Italy Excellence”), represents a chance to focus on topics that are either part of your daily work, or in which you are particularly interested.

The course gives you the opportunity of meeting with various leading realities (Italian and international) and top managers in industry and consultants with whom to network and to gain a better understanding of the key challenges they have to cope with every day. Furthermore, it gives you hints of a potential professional growth path you can follow, by listening to their lives and experiences.

The real case studies are an essential part of the program and foster the discussion on real-life situations that you face in your work. For me, it was of great value to take a deep dive into the concrete issues of my professional life, to look at things in a different way and with a renewed way of thinking. The whole experience is completed with key theoretical principles about which it is always useful to refresh your memory, and I think it is also a nice experience to look at them again with some years of work experience behind you.

It also represents a unique opportunity for networking with the students on other MBA courses (for example, the Full-time MBA, or other international students from exchange programs), because the bootcamps are run across the various international programs. I had the chance of interacting with almost 60 young professionals working or willing to work in my sector, and to discuss and share opinions with them on a variety of topics.

If you can and want to travel, MIP also offers you the chance of taking this course abroad in prime destinations, such as Silicon Valley or Asia.

About the author
 Pietro Cavallo

My name is Pietro and I grew up in Milan, where I am currently living. I work in Switzerland, in the Supply Chain division of a clothing multinational. I am the husband of an incredible wife and father of 2 crazy kids.

 

«Why did you choose Italy?» Tales of students from around the globe

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In the last article, we talked about the importance of Multinational Networking in an MBA. One of the most important benefits you can get is the development of long-lasting relationships with like-minded people. You can find real friends!

And talking about MBA friends, I’d like to share with you the experiences of some of them: Bruno Pivato from Brazil, Jo Eun Cha from S. Korea and Alejandro Tommasi from Venezuela. I guess their words will be much more meaningful than mine in helping you understand the beauty of diversity:

Bruno Pivato

“I was born in Brazil, where I was educated and developed my career. I have a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.

I started my professional career in 2005, as an intern in a national investment bank, working in the area of foreign exchange, and then moving to BankBoston. After 2 years in the banking sector, I decided to try a new experience in Marketing, in a totally different company belonging to the medical technology sector. I became a Senior Marketing Analyst and, in 2012, I decided to leave and join 3M as a project manager. After that, I accepted a start-up project linked to Covidien, a big multinational company in the pharma sector. This experience led me to join Zambon, at the HQ in Italy, where I became a “Business Operations Manager”, responsible for Marketing and Business Development for 5 countries: Brazil, Colombia, China, Indonesia and Russia.

It wasn’t that easy to adapt to the Italian environment, but I found out that the best part of Italy is the people. Both in the office and in the street, I have found Italians to be very open-minded and receptive.”

Jo Eun Cha

“I was born and raised in Seoul, S. Korea. I graduated in economics and worked as a Buyer for watches and accessories for 5 years. My dream was to work in the fashion industry, so I decided to study and go for it. I moved to Milan 10 years ago to study and to work. Then Singapore and Seoul again. Anyway, when I was in Milan, my manager called me one day, asking me to join his team in PVH. I accepted and now I’ve been working here for almost 4 years. I always wanted to apply for an MBA, so I decided to do it this year, so here I am.

Why did I decide to come to Milan? Well, Koreans love Italian products and I wanted to learn something about European culture. As soon as I arrived in Milan, I realized that the size of the city was right for me, even if it was much smaller than Seoul.

As far as the working environment is concerned, the Italian and Korean cultures are quite different. In Seoul, you work more and you’re more stressed out. In Italy, people work hard too ̶ but they place more importance on family, food, chatting and chilling. There’s a better work-life balance, and this helps you to perform better in the office too. This made me change my mindset, I guess for the better. I’m now confident that it is possible to set the path for my future career while enjoying life at the same time.”

Alejandro Tommasi

“I was born in Caracas, where I lived until I was 15. The awful political situation forced me and my family to leave our country, looking for safety, opportunities and a future in my grandparents’ land: Italy. At the beginning, it was hard to adapt to a completely different environment; it took me years to finally find a balance. This experience helped me to grow and improve myself. Italy has given me some amazing opportunities: I studied and graduated in Mechanical Engineering, in the beautiful city of Turin.

Italy is a place drenched in culture, history, style, art and nature. I think it is a place which everyone around the world dreams of visiting at least once in a lifetime. I’m confident that this country has enormous potential to excel in every single field, and this potential should be transformed into action and plans for future development.

In my current position, I develop technological machining solutions to meet customers’ needs for many industries. I’m sure that with the knowledge, experience and benefits of exchanging views gained during this International MBA at MIP, I could apply all my energies to contribute to improving this country and its potential, especially in this difficult moment. I’m sure that diversity is always a provider of opportunities, looking at a future in a more and more interconnected world.”

Well, I don’t have much more to say. I guess my new colleagues and friends have said quite enough to make you understand the many differences (and the possibilities connected with these differences) that you can find in a multicultural environment, such that of the International Part-Time MBA at MIP.

I just want to leave you all with a final quote, by Stephen R. Covey, the famous American educator:

“Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.” 

Let’s hope this strength will help us to get out of this tragic situation, and to increase our confidence in the future with a renewed spirit.

 

About the author
 Marco Di Salvio

Student of the International Part Time MBA at MIP Politecnico di Milano.
Industrial Engineer currently working @ Gucci as WW Supply & Demand Planner, based in Florence.
Tech passionate, Cinema-lover, Sports addicted.
Solving the world’s problems one spreadsheet at a time.

 

 

Tiresia Research Center among the winners of the EIC “Blockchains for social good” Award

Posted on | by Marta Re Ferrè | Leave a Comment on Tiresia Research Center among the winners of the EIC “Blockchains for social good” Award

 

Tiresia, the research centre on innovation, entrepreneurship and social finance of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, is among the six winners of the European Commission’s EIC Horizon “Blockchains for Social Good” award, which will receive a total of 5 million euros for the application of Distributed Ledger technologies to face the major challenges of our society.

While the potential of blockchain technology has been tested in the financial field, its applications in the social and sustainability fields are still underdeveloped. The aim of the “Blockchains for Social Good” award is to support innovators and civil society in exploring the possible applications of blockchain technology for digital social innovation.

Tiresia is partner of the consortium led by Aalto University (Finland) which won in the “Financial inclusion” category, with the project GMERITS (Generalised Merits for Respect and Social Equality), which will be financed with one million euros.
GMERITS is a large-scale experiment to evaluate alternative economic structures, analysing the most effective governance schemes and different compensation models.

Tiresia’s role is to investigate the importance that data and technology can play as enablers of generation and impact management. In addition, it will be an assessor of the social impact generated by the experimental applications within the project.
The consortium also includes three social-tech business initiatives in Europe (REC in Barcelona, Me Sensei in Helsinki and Merits in Milan).

The award, launched with funds from the Enhanced European Innovation Council (EIC) is an integral part of the European Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative that supports innovators, entrepreneurs, SMEs and researchers to develop their ideas, through funding, networking and coaching activities, and to explore the potential of the Blockchain in new areas of application, in particular for identifying solutions to local and global sustainability challenges.

 

 

 

 

The power of diversity: the MBA & multinational networking

Posted on | by Beatrice Grillo | Leave a Comment on The power of diversity: the MBA & multinational networking

“Networking is not just about connecting people. It’s about connecting people with people, people with ideas and people with opportunities.” (Michele Jennae)

When I enrolled for an MBA at MIP, I already knew that this kind of experience would be much more than classes, exams and company visits. One of the main achievements of an MBA is the network you can create during this period.

I get it, often networking isn’t at the top of everyone’s to-do list. It can be time-consuming, awkward on occasion, and, depending on your personality, incredibly draining.

It can appear that hard skills and knowledge are far more important than having a few words with colleagues or joining events. But that’s quite wrong. Sometimes you learn more by taking a coffee or sharing a slice of pizza with a person with a different background, than actually studying a book on finance accounting (which is still a super-important subject. Nothing against it, I swear!)

And that’s what’s happening during my first months of the MBA; I’m getting to know many interesting people, with different stories, backgrounds, ambitions and nationalities.

Yes, nationalities. I decided to join the International Part-Time MBA in order to benefit from an international environment.

Sundar Pichai, former CEO of Google, once said:

“A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone.”

And I totally agree with this sentence. A multicultural environment (and networking in general) can bring many benefits:

1.     Strengthen business connections:

Networking is about sharing, not only taking. It is about forming trust and helping one another toward goals. Regularly engaging with your contacts and finding opportunities to assist them helps to strengthen the relationships. By doing this, you sow the seeds for reciprocal assistance when you need help to achieve your own goals.

Tell me, would you rather help: A) a colleague with whom you have shared a drink, or B), a colleague who don’t even say “hi” when you run into him? The logical answer would be A (otherwise maybe you should be reading articles on how to deal with problems in socialising?)

2.     Get fresh ideas:

Your network can be an excellent source of new ideas to help you in your role (both present and future). And what about a multicultural network? It can be an even better source of inspiration. Different cultures have different ways of approaching problems. Everyone is looking at situations through a different lens, a unique perspective. This can lead to a wide range of ideas that would benefit any team.

Is it easy? Absolutely not. At least, not at the beginning. During my first group assignment on the Erasmus programme, I was in a group with a Chinese, a Japanese, a German and an American (it sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it actually happened). It was a real mess… One person focused more on the content, someone else more on the form, others on the speech, etc. But mixing up all these different approaches brought us to a final result which was much better than the one we had in mind at the beginning.

3.        Develop long-lasting personal relationships:

Last but not least! The point of networking is not only to develop professional relationships, but also (and above all) to create strong and long-lasting friendships. I’ve always thought that the more you grow up, the more you’re able to find people you share your vision of life with. Your MBA networking contacts will usually be like-minded people with similar goals to your own, so it’s not unlikely that they’ll become great friends of yours.

These are only a few of the benefits you can get from an international environment. But they should be enough to push you try out an experience like an International MBA. You’ll need to discover all the other benefits for yourselves! ?

About the author
 Marco Di Salvio

Student of the International Part Time MBA at MIP Politecnico di Milano.
Industrial Engineer currently working @ Gucci as WW Supply & Demand Planner, based in Florence.
Tech passionate, Cinema-lover, Sports addicted.
Solving the world’s problems one spreadsheet at a time.

 

 

Nice To MIP You: our doors are open again! We look forward to seeing you in September.

Posted on | by Chiara Vasta | Leave a Comment on Nice To MIP You: our doors are open again! We look forward to seeing you in September.

At MIP, we have always been open. To new ideas, new technologies, new stimuli, new people. From September we will be even more so. Our lecture theatres, our campus, our study areas and, in general, all our spaces, are ready to welcome professors, staff, collaborators and, above all, students from all over the world, both new arrivals and those who already know us.

We want the reopening to be a special moment, which is why we have taken all the necessary measures to make our premises welcoming and, above all, safe.

Get ready to enjoy an experience at MIP in the spirit of safety, technology and charm that only a modern and cosmopolitan city like Milan can offer.

 

THE SECURITY TRIANGLE 

MIP is reopening with complete safety thanks to the adoption of a three-point strategy. The first consists in prevention: in addition to measuring temperatures at the entrance, MIP will be providing a free supply of disposable masks, while social distancing will be ensured by clear signs. The second point involves sanitisation: all of MIP’s areas will be constantly disinfected; the ventilation systems will guarantee the continuous renewal of air and it will be possible to clean your hands thanks to the sanitising points located throughout the school. The third point is related to services: we have created an email address, life@mip.polimi.it, dedicated solely to your questions about safety measures. The common areas for study and leisure will be reorganised. Educational activities will be guaranteed online and on campus, to meet all your learning needs.

EDUCATION ONLINE AND ON CAMPUS 

MIP, which has always been innovation-oriented, can draw on a consolidated experience in digital education. Our digital learning platforms are ready to host all of our lessons, with both live streaming and recorded sessions to ensure continuity for those who are unable to attend in person.

On the campus side, however, we are working to ensure social distancing through careful planning of both times and spaces, the latter of which will be expanded. The lessons will be organised over two different shifts, and we are working with businesses to ensure the continuation of corporate testimonials and all projects that involve them, including company visits.
Education

 

MILAN: WHERE CREATIVITIES, TRADITION AND MODERNITY MEET

The MIP campus is located in Milan, a modern, European city that offers students from all over the world countless opportunities for study, work and fun. Over the years, it has seen the birth and development of international excellence, especially in the fields of fashion, design, entrepreneurship and finance. Milan knows how to combine typically Italian characteristics, such as creativity, hard work and entrepreneurship, with an international and modern approach. In recent decades it has come to embody the concept of the industrial and hardworking city, and today it has established itself as the Italian capital of startups. Constantly forward-looking, it is the right place for those who want to grow, better themselves and innovate. After the lockdown period and following the directives issued by the relevant authorities, the city has returned to opening up a large part of its activities and to offering all its services, which have helped to position it as one of the most dynamic and avant-garde cities in Europe.

Milan