Tag: eMagazine

Multidisciplinarity: a new discipline

Posted on | by Marta Re Ferrè | Leave a Comment on Multidisciplinarity: a new discipline

 

Conversation with Vittorio Chiesa, President of MIP Graduate School of Business

 

We live in a world characterised by increasing interaction between disciplines, in which the professional profiles required by companies are changing. What role can a business school play in this framework?

The business school sector evolves with companies and the wider role they play in society. Companies have been required to operate with a “purpose”, i.e. to act not only for profit but for higher aims, so that they have a positive impact on the system in which they participate. Markets and consumers are showing a growing awareness of this issue and it has become essential for companies to have a relationship with their stakeholders.

Business schools must pay the same attention to students and companies. It is with this objective in mind that this year we obtained Bcorp (Benefit Corporation) certification by joining the international community of companies that stand out for their commitment to combine profit, the pursuit of well-being for society, inclusion, and attention to the environment.

The “purpose” must become a fundamental part in the development of people’s skills, so we can train managers capable of conceiving companies at the service of society.
Companies are asking us to make this cultural leap and we can help by teaching our students how a company can and should contribute positively to the system and country.
Our role is to prepare professionals to introduce strongly purpose oriented innovations that are financially and socially important.

Multidisciplinarity is functional to this objective as it imposes breadth of vision, flexibility, critical spirit, and intuition. Modern training does not only include restricted specialisation but interaction with other disciplines to create more complete professional profiles. Such people must be capable of systemic level analysis and guide companies by defining and drawing inspiration from a “purpose.”

Multidisciplinarity as a tool for breadth of vision and adaptability towards the world. How to integrate it into training?

Traditionally, the multidisciplinary approach was to provide different perspectives within a training programme, and offer different contributions within basic and specialist training. The synthesis between multidisciplinarity and specialist skills is left to the individual.

But it is possible to apply a radically different approach by integrating multidisciplinarity into a training programme, regardless of the subject. The modern challenge is to manage the complexity of this new approach. For example by using innovative teaching techniques which change the interaction between professor and student to make this type of training more effective.
At the moment it is not widely and easily disseminated, but several experiments are underway.

It requires training programme planning and preparation of professors, or rather groups of professors, working in teams. Multidisciplinary training needs more interaction, and to be delivered to small groups using teaching formats that actively involve students.

I believe that the future distinctive element between teaching programmes will be initiatives with specialist standardised content for large numbers, and more transversal content and innovative teaching methods, dedicated to more restricted groups.

Lately there is much talk of life-long education as a key to the continuous updating of skills. Is it a dynamic that intersects with multidisciplinarity?

Lifelong learning means remaining aligned with the environment development and this only rarely or partially happens through vertical insights. More often it means widening the professional profile.

What has been said before applies to lifelong learning too – it must be based on broader contents, and different from the past, using specific platforms capable of dealing with broad disciplinary ranges.

Purpose and multidisciplinarity. What are MIP’s plans for the future of these aspects?

All training programmes will include modules on “purpose,” the role of the company and managers as leaders and innovators.

Opening “Purpose Labs”, i.e. training initiatives dedicated to in-depth studying and analysing how a company can build its purpose, and support companies’ top management in this development.

Finally, innovating our service formats, so that the school is not just a place for training, but a place that encourages a person’s growth. This includes the assessment of skills, guidance, and professional development.

Inspiration from evolutionary approaches: algorithms and challenges in finance

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Advanced analytical techniques borrowed from a heterogeneous literature to extract valuable insights from data are gaining momentum within the finance community. This article briefly introduces how financial ecosystems are increasingly responsive to the application of biological and evolutionary algorithms aimed to analyze the behavior and dynamics of their participants.

Andrea Flori, Assistant Professor in Management and Finance at School of Management, Politecnico di Milano

 

In a popular 1973 work, Burton Malkiel showed how a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at the financial pages of a newspaper could select a portfolio which would perform just as well as one carefully constructed by experts (“A Random Walk Down Wall Street”, 1973), helping to fuel the debate on the possibility of extracting information from financial data and from the behaviour of market operators.

Financial markets are an arena where predictive techniques and algorithms attempt to challenge market efficiency using pattern identification.

Within this framework, numerous methodologies borrowed from various scientific fields have spread and combined to provide a new perspective for studying the dynamics of complex financial systems and the interdependencies that govern their participants’ relationships.

Market infrastructure, the role of information and the behaviour of the operators represent, therefore, some typical pillars employed to define such approaches of analysis within financial contexts.

In particular, approaches inspired by biological perspectives have captured the attention of many financial operators interested in a new generation of intelligent techniques of analysis and calculation that mimic human actions.

Hence, genetic algorithms and neural networks have pervaded financial literature and contributed to the dissemination of methodological innovations inspired by the biological evolution and human functioning. By relying on a multidisciplinary and computationally evolved perspective of analysis, these approaches have shown to obtain promising results compared to traditional methods of statistical analysis.

Specifically, genetic algorithms employ natural selection and genetics tools and perspectives to identify the best solution to problems. By mimicking biological evolution, an initial population is iteratively mutated and recombined to determine subsequent generations, so that changes with a desirable impact are retained in the gene pool of future generations in an attempt to converge towards optimal solutions. Each individual, i.e. candidate solution, is assigned a fitness value, and individuals with more promising characteristics are assigned a higher probability of mating to generate new individuals, i.e. potentially better performing solutions to problems, thus in line with the Darwinian theory of the “survival of the fittest”. Neural networks, instead, learn from data structure and process a signal through interconnected artificial neurons creating a configuration similar to the human nervous system. Each connection is associated with a weight that contains information about the input signal that inhibits or stimulates the signal that is communicated to the neurons to accomplish a specific task. External information is used as input and processed internally in one or more layers of analysis by activating specific neurons that transmit the signal to others before determining an output with a predictive accuracy that can be increased by a learning process of previous actions. Neural networks are a complex adaptive system which can change and adapt its internal structure based on the situation and information that crosses it.

These approaches are therefore flexible and able to adapt to new circumstances, possibly learning from past experience and reacting to stimuli coming from new signals in the system.

It is not surprising, therefore, that such techniques, either separately or combined with each other, are increasingly being applied in many financial areas, such as predictive market analysis and portfolio allocation rules, hedging of financial instruments, and robo-advisor applications.

With the recent increase in computational power and resources and their wide availability, advanced techniques for massive data analysis are, in fact, gaining momentum within the finance community, contributing to a rapidly growing body of literature that exploits, in addition to the techniques mentioned above, a large-scale use of statistical and deep learning concepts to identify patterns in financial markets, study the complex non-linear relationships between and within financial time series, and identify market anomalies.

In addition, repeated episodes of financial crisis with their far-reaching externalities and cascading effects on financial markets and the real economy have driven the study and provision of new tools to monitor and predict the spread of instability in financial systems and manage critical issues that may emerge.

However, adopting statistical learning approaches and deep learning techniques in the study of financial systems requires new paradigms, knowledge and practical skills necessary to develop a solid base of models and algorithms that are properly applied in the reference domains while exploiting the potential arising from a transdisciplinary approach to scientific investigation.

In the world of finance, such tools of analysis are of the utmost importance for future technological development and play a fundamental role in many financial ecosystems. Massive data analysis using advanced statistical and deep learning techniques is in great demand in many areas and in a wide range of applications, which include in addition to forecasting market trends, also for example the study of dependencies between financial systems, the approval of credit lines, the efficient management of financial resources, the detection of anomalies and frauds, and risk assessment.

These challenges seem to indicate therefore a new research perspective, at the crossroads between data mining, predictive analysis and causal modelling, which can allow us to exploit the strength of these algorithms of analysis and calculation to investigate economic and social problems of real and changing environments.

New connections in the post-Covid era: now online the new issue of SOMeMagazine

Posted on | by Mirja Calgaro | Leave a Comment on New connections in the post-Covid era: now online the new issue of SOMeMagazine

SOMe Issue #3 has been released.
The title of this issue is “New connections in the post-Covid era”, in which we discuss the change of approach to collaborations, partnerships, international networks and events, in a world that is trying to cope with the economic global shock and the impossibility to travel.

First we present an interview with Giuliano Noci, Vice Rector of the Chinese Campus of Politecnico di Milano, who tells us how our University developed the first physical campus outside our Country, in Xi’An, China, and how this specific historical situation imposes new forms of interconnection around the world.

We then deal with the effects on large industrial networks, expos and supply chains: the present and future of the World Manufacturing Forum  – with Marco Taisch, Scientific Chairman of the World Manufacturing Foundation; the possible impacts of Expo Dubai 2020 – with Lucio Lamberti and Lucia Tajoli; the challenge of traceability on global supply chains  – with Veronica Leon Bravo.

Finally, we tell stories of education and research projects which are successfully crossing borders, dealing with capacity building and innovation management.

To read SOMe’s #3 click here.
To receive it directly in your inbox, please sign up here.

Previous issues of SOMe:

•       # 1 “Sustainability – Beyond good deeds, a good deal?”

•       Special Issue Covid-19 – “Global transformation, ubiquitous responses

•       #2 “Being entrepreneurial in a high-tech world”

 

Expo Dubai 2020: re-establishing the connections

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Lucia Tajoli, Full professor of International Economics, School of Management, Politecnico di Milano

Lucio Lamberti, Full professor of Multichannel Customer Strategy, School of Management, Politecnico di Milano
Coordinator of the Physiology, Emotion and Experience Lab

 

Expo Dubai 2020, which will be held between October 2021 and March 2022 after a year’s postponement due to the pandemic, will—presumably and hopefully—be a key hub, post-Covid. World Expos are considered to be mega events, comparable in impact only to the World Football Championships and the Olympics in terms of media exposure, number of participants and effects on the host economy, but unlike mega sports events, they last longer (6 months) and potentially have a greater influence on the economy of the participating countries.

The last two editions of the World Expo have had special connotations. The 2010 Shanghai event was the largest in history in terms of participants, with around 84 million visitors. The theme was the quality of life in cities (“Better City, Better Life”), but, not by chance, together with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it was also China’s way of demonstrating to the world the socio-economic prominence that the country had achieved. The 2015 Expo, held in Milan and focused on the theme of the ability to provide high-quality food to humanity (“Feeding the planet, Energy for life”), attracted around 20 million visitors, and represented, in a stagnant national economic context and despite considerable organisational complexity, a driving force for what many international analysts have considered the Milanese “Renaissance” of the last lustre.
The theme of Expo Dubai 2020 is “Connecting Minds, Creating the future“. The event focuses on the role of interconnection as a key to sustainable development.

192 countries have signed up, including Italy, which will participate with a pavilion with the theme “Beauty Unites People“.
The Politecnico di Milano and its School of Management are partners of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is organising Italy’s participation in Expo Dubai 2020, and, starting from 2018, has developed several studies aimed at quantifying the potential impacts of this involvement. Indeed, beyond the obvious need to justify the investment of public resources in the construction of the Pavilion, the measurement of returns (economic and non-economic) is made particularly relevant by the geopolitical specificities of this event: the geographical position of Dubai, the hub of the ME.Na.Sa. (Middle East, North Africa and South Asia) area, and logistics intersection, and the passageways of the New Silk Road makes this Expo a fundamental point of contact between Europe and the areas of the world with the highest rates of economic growth and growth of the middle classes.

It is no coincidence that the event, in the initial forecasts, has attracted a very large majority of non-local visitors, and foresees a committed and significant participation in terms of planning from both Middle Eastern countries and emerging economies such as those of India and Central-Southern Asia. This is a very important opportunity to address the issue of sustainable development in these areas of the world, for example with reference to Infrastructure and transport, the enhancement of cultural heritage, life sciences and aerospace.

Three main kinds of consideration justify the great attention that economic operators in the world are paying to the event.
Firstly, being the first World Expo held in the Middle East, Expo Dubai 2020 represents an opportunity to consolidate business and representation relations at various levels between this area of the world, the Arab world, North Africa and Europe.
Secondly, it is an Expo with a strong research connotation (even more so considering that the pandemic could reduce the number of “real” visitors and increase the virtual interconnection aspect): the Expo season has been archived for a couple of editions now, interpreted as a mere “showcase” of the participating countries, the logic of participation of many of the countries involved, including Italy, is to create within Expo 2020 a true hub of expertise to develop stable collaboration platforms, to be perpetuated even after the event.
Thirdly, this Expo represents one of the first mega events, together with the Tokyo Olympics, of the post-pandemic period, and will therefore have the dual role of showing the possible profile of the new normality in terms of events, flows of people and interconnections, and on the other hand of contributing to financial recovery following the interruptions linked to the pandemic.

The measurement of the impact of participation in a mega event with World Expo on the Organiser, and even more so on the countries that participate without hosting it, is a topic to which the scientific literature has not yet given definitive answers. With reference to the Olympic Games, while there are qualitative indications about the expansive result on the host country, there are also many critical voices that highlight how these initiatives tend, on a direct financial level (difference between investments and tickets, television rights, sponsors, etc.), not to pay off.
However, it is clear, on the one hand, that the direct financial effects are only one aspect of the induced fallout (there are impacts on tourism, equivalent advertising of the territory, etc.) and, on the other, that the World Expo has a different spin-off profile from the Olympic Games, due to the fact that it lasts 6 months and therefore produces a much higher flow of visitors, and because the participation of the host and organising countries is oriented towards primarily economic and diplomatic development objectives.

With reference to the participating countries, in particular, it is possible to attribute the areas of spillover to a potential impact on exports, as participation is an opportunity for promotion of one’s own excellence and of organisation of diplomatic and commercial missions. There is also, in the hub vision of Expo Dubai 2020, the possibility of promoting the meeting between supply and demand of capital, i.e. between innovative entrepreneurial initiatives and financiers, generating incoming and outgoing flows of foreign direct investment. Thirdly, participation with a pavilion at an Expo is also linked to the promotion of the cultural specificities of a territory (and the connotation focused on the beauty and technologies for cultural heritage of Italian participation makes this theme particularly central), and therefore tends to involve tourism promotion, with the potential expansive economic effects that this entails. Last but not least, diplomatic proximity and exposure to scientific collaboration platforms are increasingly a fundamental objective of participation in an Expo event. The analysis carried out in 2018 showed that a precautionary estimate of the expansionary effects of these phenomena for Italy could reach a value of 1.7 billion Euros per year for at least three to four years after the event.

It is clear that these estimates must be—if not revised, at least reconsidered—in the light of the pandemic. However, paradoxically, net of the possible further brakes to the event linked to phenomena at this unpredictable time of the continuation of the state of emergency, the need for the world economies to recover the positions lost in recent months, and the possibility of experimenting with new forms—more digital and less physical—of international promotion initiatives, could even have an even more expansive effect. What is certain is that Expo Dubai 2020 can have a symbolic value of a desire for redemption and, at the same time, a stage of further consolidation of the relationship between Europe and Asia. Analysing the effects in the short, medium and long term is a fascinating challenge that must be taken up in order to make these opportunities increasingly central in the process of developing international economic, and other, relations.

Building a Roadmap for the Future of Global Manufacturing

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Conversation with Marco Taisch
Professor of Advanced and Sustainable Manufacturing Systems, and Operations Management, School of Management, Politecnico di Milano
Scientific Chairman of the World Manufacturing Foundation
President at MADE, Competence Center on Industry 4.0

 

 

Tell us about the path that led to the World Manufacturing Forum: why was it launched, and what are its objectives?

Since first edition of the forum held in 2011, the World Manufacturing Forum is organised yearly by Politecnico di Milano with financial support from the European Commission. In 2018, thanks to Confindustria Lombardia and Regione Lombardia, in order to give stability and guarantee an expansion of activities, we created the World Manufacturing Foundation, which organises the annual event and deals with various initiatives.
The Foundation, created as an open international organization involving regional governments, companies, trade associations, industrial and non-industrial, therefore has the strategic objective of restoring the centrality of the manufacturing sector in the political agendas of various countries.

The main tools put in place are the World Manufacturing Forum, that last year attracted around 1500 people in three days, and the World Manufacturing Report, a yearly white paper that, through a process of consultation with experts from the world of business, academia and policy makers, collects opinions and offers visions for the future on a specific issue, which are relevant to manufacturing, suggesting key recommendations.

In the first edition, in 2018, we addressed the issue of the future of manufacturing as a lever for creating economic and social well-being; in the second, last year, we focused on the fundamental skills required by the sector. And this year, in the event that will take place on 11 and 12 November, we will talk about artificial intelligence.

 

The 2020 edition of the Forum has a unique flavour, a flavour relating to distance, but also to post-Covid recovery. What kind of edition will it be?

The format of the event will change due to the need for social distancing, but only in part: it will take place at the traditional venue in Villa Erba di Cernobbio with a maximum of 200 participants, with worldwide streaming.
We asked ourselves, like everyone else, what will be the impact of Covid on the manufacturing sector at regional and global level, and to give us an answer we created the “Back to the Future” project (the quote is intentional), new this year.
We “decomposed” the complexity of the problem into 14 sub-themes and created 14 working groups accordingly, each one coordinated by an expert (managers, representatives of the associative world, policy-makers, academics), who were asked to discuss and analyse the impact of Covid on their area of expertise, and to give recommendations.
We have already shared online, with the public, several drafts of documents and videos, produced by these workshops, whose results will be presented on the first day of the Forum, on November 11. On November 12 we will present the World Manufacturing Report.
If I can give a little preview, next year we will talk about digital transformation as an enabler of manufacturing sustainability, thus bringing together the two most important trends in the sector.

 

We come from the epic situation of Industry 4.0. How can digitisation in the factory world be a competitive advantage for boosting production and starting up again faster? 

Before the pandemic, it was “normal” to say that digitisation was the competitive advantage, and that’s the way we characterised the 4.0 industry. Now we have changed the statement: it is no longer an advantage, but a business prerequisite.
During the lockdown we saw how digitisation ensured business continuity for many companies that had already invested in this area. For others, unfortunately, there was nothing to be done.
It was a tragic way of realising, undoubtedly, that it affected those companies which, out of ignorance or inertia, had not paid attention to this technological trend.
In our country in particular, which was slower to adopt new technologies, the pandemic has accelerated the awareness of the importance of digitisation.

 

Large companies and small businesses: who has the advantage in this fourth industrial revolution?

Large companies have been digitising in our country for some time now, even before the “National Industry Plan 4.0” of 2017. Small and medium-sized enterprises, were, in fact, lagging behind. It was thanks to the plan, and the planned tax incentives, that they became aware of this opportunity for modernisation. Paradoxically, it was by talking about tax incentives that it was also possible to train in the field of technology, and this had a huge impact on the cultural growth of our country on these issues.
It is very important that the national plan has continuity over time, and that it is not a one-off incentive, to enable businesses—especially small ones—to plan and build a training and expertise programme. And today, to do so, they have several tools at their disposal, such as the Digital Innovation Hubs, and especially the Competence Centers. The Politecnico di Milano has put itself in the forefront of this last tool by creating MADE, a competence center that, gathering the skills of multiple departments, coordinates the work together with 44 other partners from the academic and industrial world.

 

What, in your opinion, are the 3 key words on the evolution of digital transformation in factories over the next 6 months?

First of all “servitisation”, i.e. the development of new business models that are being created thanks to new digital activities carried out in remote industries.
And then the second, “remote” or, if you like, “industrial smart working.”
Finally “resilience”, meaning adaptability, reconfigurability and flexibility of the factory and the supply chain.

How can traceability improve sustainability in the global coffee supply chain?

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Food supply chains garner public attention for sustainability; traceability is one of the possible solutions, but is it always the case?

Verónica León-Bravo, Assistant Professor, School of Management, Politecnico di Milano

 

Sustainability in the food industry has recently gained a great deal of attention, as this sector faces several challenges regarding scarce natural resources to be preserved, attention to consumer’s health and safety, communities’ economic development around the world, food and packaging waste, land and water consumption, and unfair trade relationships. Moreover, consumers today opt for food that is not only tasty and nutritious, but also of high quality, grown responsibly and with specific characteristics or origin, which in turn calls for better and more efficient traceability. Consequently, food companies are developing varied initiatives, assessment policies, standards, traceability systems and reporting tools with sustainability purposes.

During the current health world emergency, food chains are also struggling with menaces on their products’ health and safety. As is the case of a few Brazilian poultry exporters who were suspended by China in July 2020 due to concerns about possible Covid-19 contamination in the containers. China established certain restrictions and newer or different certification requirements for food products coming from several countries, with the aim of avoiding a new outbreak, although no evidence that Covid-19 could be transmitted though food existed. Another case was related to Ecuadorian shrimp exports to China, which were suspended in July 2020 because of similar concerns relating to the containers, though the shrimp and inner packaging tested negative. How can companies in producing countries ensure buyers the quality and, even more critically, the health and safety of their products? Around the world, improved traceability could be the key for supply chain continuity under risky or unexpected situations.

Through its Food Sustainability Lab, the School of Management at the Politecnico di Milano is dedicated to studying the elements shaping and determining the food supply chain efforts to become sustainable, and improve its sustainability; thus, a broad multidisciplinary team is running several research initiatives in this area, given the interest and relevance for the academic community, companies and society at large.

One of the research lines is focused on the traceability systems implemented along the supply chain, in particular for food commodities, such as coffee, that involve actors dispersed around the world. Commodity chains are highly fragmented and long, with many very small producers in low-income countries, and several intermediaries are needed to ensure the product flow from origin to consumption. According to the International Coffee Organization, coffee consumption is steadily growing globally, reaching up to more than 169 million bags in 2019-2020. Producers (exporters) are mainly located in South America, Africa and South-East Asia, with Brazil being responsible for 43% of production. Global consumption registered close 119 million bags in 2019-2020, with the largest importers being the European Union and the United States [1]. Consumers in these markets increasingly demand coffee that is not only safe but also ethical, organic, generates a low carbon footprint, etc., requiring the supply chain to demonstrate traceability throughout the chain.

Traceability systems available in the market are said to help actors in the chain not only to track the product from origin to final consumption, but also to respond to the need for mandatory and voluntary quality standards, certifications of origin, and to create the basis for reporting sustainability-related practices and performance. The benefits of traceability could be spread along food supply chains: for managing risks, maintaining consistency and specific product features, and keeping a chain of custody. In addition, traceability helps to achieve operational efficiencies, increased productivity and reputational benefits.
Nonetheless, traceability requires substantial investments in technology and processes aimed at tracking goods along the supply chain. Cost is still proving to be a difficult barrier to overcome, especially in the initial production phases. Current debate in the literature also questions whether traceability systems are driven only by quality assurance expectations, or are also somehow related to sustainability needs and goals.

The research team at our School involved in this project is composed by Prof. Federico Caniato, Federica Ciccullo, Verónica León-Bravo and Giulia Bartezzaghi. Currently, we investigate the traceability systems implemented in the coffee supply chain, providing a taxonomy of solutions and characterizing how these systems are applied, in terms of technological display, information width and depth, as well as considering their relationship with sustainable value creation. The analysis of the case studies (including different stages in the chain, located in different geographical regions) revealed how the implementation of traceability systems along the coffee supply chain could be influenced by the targeted information width and depth, along with the supply chain tier, country of origin or company technological capabilities. On the other hand, it is observed that the link between traceability and sustainability, especially for coffee roasters, might be influenced by two main contingencies: volumes purchased and product type. Indeed, one of the companies being studied explained that dealing with large volumes makes it impossible to trace all the details up to the producer, especially for non-certified products. On the other hand, another company, using advanced technology for traceability, highlighted the precise information they are able to register and communicate while buying smaller lots from certified coffee producers. Besides, we found traceability and sustainability to be disconnected when they are both implemented but managed separately and not aligned. Whereas, traceability and sustainability can be synergistic when both followed a common strategy and are consistent with each other, i.e., the level of detail in the traceability system corresponds to the scope of sustainability practices.

Maintaining consistency and keeping a chain of evidence (e.g., benefits of traceability) are efforts incurred during the current health crisis as companies worked hard to apply newer and stricter safety measures that needed to be shown to international buyers. For instance, the Brazilian Ministry of Health and the slaughterhouses affected by the Chinese restrictions are working to reverse the bans and started testing the cargoes with the aim of demonstrating to buyers that the food is not only sanitized in the plants, but also before transportation. Similarly, Ecuador improved shipping protocols and applied the required quality standards, allowing shrimp exports to China to be resumed in August 2020. These two examples also show that different actors in the supply chain need to work together to apply health and safety measures, that in turn need to be demonstrated to the downstream actors, thereby ensuring traceability and transparency along the supply chain.

There is no doubt that adopting traceability could bring varied benefits to companies in the food supply chain, but for improving sustainability, it might not be enough. Sustainability in food supply chains needs attention from varied angles. Traceability implementation in a commodity supply chain is one of the projects currently being developed at our School. Other research projects in place are observing different food supply chain configurations, such as short supply chains, and their implications for sustainability; or analyzing the added value of information obtained in the assessment for sustainability with a supply chain-wide perspective.

Managing sustainability along food supply chains is still a work in progress that requires multi-tier involvement for reducing ‘distances’, reaching common understandings and better performances; and thus, achieving food security, improved nutrition and sustainable agriculture as called for by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

 

___________________________

[1] http://www.ico.org/prices/new-consumption-table.pdf 

Entrepreneurship in an interconnected world: now online the new issue of SOMeMagazine

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SOMe Issue #2 has been released.

SOMe is the eMagazine of our School born to share stories, points of view and projects around key themes of our mission.

The title of this issue is “Being entrepreneurial in a high tech world“, in which we discuss the change of approach to entrepreneurship in an increasingly interconnected world, but also dealing with the most serious health crisis of the last century.

First we present an interview with Andrea Sianesi, President PoliHub, Innovation District and Startup Accelerator of Politecnico di Milano, who tells us how entrepreneurship is evolving in this scenario and how the role of incubators is changing.

We then deal with some specific elements – such as strategy, leadership and business models – with editorials by Federico Frattini, Antonio Ghezzi, Roberto Verganti.

Finally, we tell stories of Alumni who turned their ideas in successful business initiatives.

To read SOMe’s #2 click here.

To receive it directly in your inbox, please sign up here.

Previous issues of SOMe:

• # 1 “Sustainability – Beyond good deeds, a good deal?”
• Special Issue Covid-19 – “Global transformation, ubiquitous responses”

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

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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.

 

The future of business schools between innovation and entrepreneurship

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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.