ERS European Research Seminar 2021

 

On June 10th and 11th Politecnico di Milano hosted the sixteenth edition of the European Research Seminar (ERS) on Logistics and Supply Chain Management (https://www.ers-conference.org/).

Due to the COVID emergency, the conference was entirely held online, but this did not make it less interactive and stimulating, and it offered great opportunities for exchange.

50 professors and researchers from all over the world participated, presenting their works and providing interesting elements for discussion about the main trends in the sector of logistics and supply chain management.
Several topics were touched: innovation, technology, circular economy, economic, environmental and social sustainability.

Carl Marcus Wallenburg (WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, Germany) and Andreas Wieland (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) were the conference co-chairs. Angela Tumino and Riccardo Mangiaracina were the local hosts of the conference, as well as members of the scientific committee. Arianna Seghezzi, Chiara Siragusa and Elena Tappia chaired some of the main sessions.

The conference closed with great satisfaction of all the participants.

Practicing Continuous Innovation in Digital Ecosystems

Luca Gastaldi, Associate Professor, Politecnico di Milano
Jeannette Visser-Groeneveld, Executive Secretary CINet, University of Twente
Harry Boer, Professor of Aalborg University

On 20-22 September 2020, the 21st CINet Conference on Practicing Continuous Innovation in Digital Ecosystems was held. The conference was preceded by the 20th CINet PhD workshop.

The event was hosted by the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano (Luca Gastaldi, Mariano Corso, Daniel Trabucchi, Stefano Magistretti and Rosella Onofrio) but took place virtually, due to the Corona pandemic.

The PhD workshop attracted 16 students from six different countries, who presented and discussed their research designs and early findings. Reflecting current hot topics in industry and science, the studies discussed included digital technologies, maturity and transformation, business model innovation, and digital platforms.

In the conference, the same topics were on the top of the agenda. In total, the 110 attendants from 16 countries worldwide, presented twelve papers on Value Creation in Digital Ecosystems, and an additional four papers on (Innovation in) Ecosystems. Other popular topics included Design Thinking and Continuous Innovation (eight papers), Innovation through Digitalization (eleven papers), and Healthcare Innovation (four papers). Furthermore, considering emerging societal issues in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, a special session was held on Innovation and Resilience, aimed at stimulating new research avenues and knowledge on how innovation management approaches are interlinked with resilience in organizations and how resilience can become a focal aspect in these approaches and innovation outcomes

Keynote addresses were delivered by Professor Wim Vanhaverbeke (Surrey Business School, United Kingdom) who spoke on Digital Technologies and the Role of Innovation Ecosystem Management: Examples from Agriculture and Healthcare, and Professor Roberto Verganti (Politecnico di Milano, Italy and Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden), who shared his thoughts on Data and Platforms in the New Normal.

Having an entirely virtual conference cum workshop was an entirely new experience for all participants. The digital platform created by Luca Gastaldi and his team functioned perfectly, without any glitch. The conference program was fully navigable, and gave direct access to the session rooms, the plenary rooms, and the papers collected in the conference proceedings. Attendance to the sessions was quite comparable to that of “normal”, physical, conference and the same held for the interactions between the participants.

All in all, a very and, perhaps, unexpectedly, good experience. Yet, many participants agreed that going virtual can be done quite effectively and provide a good climate for presentations and discussions, but does not exceed the benefits of face-to-face interactions. Hopefully, the 22nd CINet Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, 12-14 September 2021 brings us back to the old “normal”.

International Business in the Pandemic and Post-Pandemic Era – EIBA 2020 Conference

 

The sudden emergency of COVID-19 instantly changed the landscape of business (and conferences) around the world. Some of the features that characterize the business environment in the pandemic era include increasing uncertainty and complexity, the growing importance of digital connectivity, changes in the international labour markets, and emerging geopolitical tensions.

We already see the first consequences on the company-level, such as the resilience of GVCs becoming a leitmotif of international configuration and reconfiguration of MNEs’ activities, political discussions about regionalization and de-globalization, reshoring, and back-shoring strategies, to name just a few.
With travelling often impossible and almost always limited, urgent calls for citizens to return to their home-countries, expatriates and management-teams of MNEs also had to adjust their way of doing business and living.

The 46th Annual Conference of the European International Business Academy (EIBA), which will take place fully on line from 10 to 12 December 2020, will be dedicated to discussing the trends, the challenges, and the new normal in the international economic, technological, and social environments, as well as implications for MNEs and MNE employees.

Though fully online, the EIBA conference will follow the same structure as the traditional one, with doctoral workshops, plenary panels, paper presentations (competitive, interactive, poster) and panel sessions.

Special workshops are being organised on recent topics in International Business teaching and research, as well as academia in general, by experts in the field.

The call for posters & workshop proposals will be open until October 19, 2020.
For more information, please visit the conference website: www.eiba.online.

Looking forward to see you at EIBA 2020 Online!

Lucia Piscitello
EIBA Chair
Professor of International Business, School of Management, Politecnico di Milano