International, responsible and nurturing: envisioning the future of our School

Interview with Raffaella Cagliano, newly appointed Academic Director of the School of Management

 

Your recent appointment as Academic Director of the School of Management took place at the same time as the election of the new Rector of the Politecnico di Milano, prof. Donatella Sciuto. This is the beginning of a new phase for the University as a whole, which has to face various new challenges. Starting from your program, what is your vision and what are the School’s priorities for the next few years?

Taking on the role of Academic Director is a great honor and responsibility. Our School, together with the whole Politecnico di Milano and the University system, is facing relevant challenges that ask for a clear vision and considerable accountability.

Thanks to the constant improvement of the positioning of Politecnico di Milano in the international rankings, and the excellent results obtained by the School of Management in the last six years, many opportunities have opened up and need to be concretely exploited.

This is also a flourishing time for Italian Universities, thanks to the financing received for research projects and positions within the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) scheme, which outlines the goals, reforms and investments that Italy intends to pursue through NextGenerationEU funds to mitigate the COVID-19 socio-economic impact.

However, for their potential to be fully exploited these opportunities must be managed conscientiously. The new resources and collaborations resulting from this fast growth must be consolidated into a new solid base for further developments, while also keeping in mind that the pressing societal challenges and the recent developments in the geo-political scene are asking universities for a decisive contribution, that is, to provide answers and at the same time to also develop a culture of peace and sustainable development.

In this scenario, the School of Management’s main priority is to strengthen the excellence achieved, with the aim of becoming an international leader in responsible research and education, and of allowing our people, and especially the young professors, to thrive and develop their best capacities, for them to contribute to a general positive impact on society as well as to the success of our School.

 

To this respect, in recent years, the school has worked a lot to create awareness of the impacts generated by scientific research and to promote sustainability. How does it deal now with the complexities of the current socio-economic and environmental challenges that you have mentioned?

Sustainability and social impact continue to be central to the strategy of our School. We are aware of the challenges the business and economic system and the society as well are facing and, together with the whole Politecnico, we want to develop and disseminate the knowledge that is needed to transition to a greener and more just world, while producing and spreading wellbeing. We see our role as particularly important in contributing to the common good through a critical understanding of both the opportunities and the challenges offered by technology.

We pursue this mission by creating and sharing knowledge through high-quality education, the quest for scientific excellence and active community engagement.

 

The Department of Management, Economics and industrial Engineering, which is part of the School, has just been appointed as a “department of excellence” for the five-year period 2023-2027 by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, which will fund the HumanTech (Humans and Technology) project. The issue of man at the center of technological development has been one of the main areas of focus for the School (we talked about this in issue #6). Can you briefly tell us what the objectives of the project are?

The HumanTech project is a great opportunity for the School to foster collaboration between the different research groups and knowledge centers inside and outside the Department towards a common research objective. They will jointly develop relevant insights and knowledge about novel ways to approach and implement digital technology innovation with the aim of balancing two goals: improving the wellbeing of individuals and the whole society while also being economically sustainable.

In our view, there is a pressing need to evolve the current technological development model from maximizing economic results towards a more “human” form, that is, a model that in addition to the financial and economic implications also takes into account human, social and environmental ones from the very beginning.

Thanks to the financing obtained, the School will develop top-notch labs supporting behavioral and cognitive ergonomics research in virtual and immersive environments, which will ground the leadership of our School in the field.

We are setting challenging performance targets in terms of outcome, reach and impact of our research results in the next five years. If we will be able to fulfil this promise, these results will further consolidate the excellence and international positioning of our School among the top European schools of management within technical universities. You will read more details on the project in the editorial piece by Federico Caniato.

 

If you had to briefly give 3 keywords for the future of the School in the short term, what would they be?

Nurturing – We wish to nurture our Faculty by creating an inspiring and stimulating environment for developing excellent and impactful research and innovative teaching.

Responsible – Our responsibility stands in pursuing research and teaching oriented to have a positive impact on companies and the local community. By developing and disseminating knowledge on the role of technology and innovation, we contribute to a better and more just society.

International – We aim at attracting talents worldwide and becoming a center of excellence renowned for the quality and standing or our research and teaching activities.

Change at the top of our Business School

Today’s shareholders’ meeting has ratified the change at the top of our Business School, starting from the 1st of January 2020: Andrea Sianesi, appointed by the Senate and the University Board as the new President of Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, leaves the Presidency to Vittorio Chiesa and the office of Dean to Federico Frattini.

The gratitude of the whole School goes to Andrea for all the work he has done in recent years.

Under his guidance, MIP has, in fact, contributed substantially and fundamentally to the achievement of significant successes on the part of the School of Management in terms of international accreditations (EQUIS for 5 years, AMBA for 5 years, EOCCS for two Flex EMBA courses and the forthcoming AACSB) and results in the rankings (e.g. 7th in the world in QS – Online MBA), which today enable the School of Management to rank among the best management schools in the world which belong to a technical university.

Again, under his guidance, MIP has succeeded in following a path of progressive integration within the School, which, together with the strong drive for internationalisation, innovation in terms of both product and format and the ever increasing application of digital technology to the provision of training courses, has allowed the attainment of remarkable growth in both turnover and profitability, generating resources that have been committed to the development of the faculty of the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, or to support the School’s strategic projects (funding for the development of activities in China and for the Gianluca Spina residency) and, last but not least, for the realisation of innovative projects for the application of digital technologies (AI) to lifelong learning (the FLEXA project).

A big thank you then, to Andrea, and our best wishes for success in his next professional challenge.

Alessandro Perego on behalf of the whole Politecnico di Milano School of Management

 

Welcome to our Chinese website!

We are delighted to inform you that from today, the Chinese version of the  School of Management website will be online.

The aim of this website is both to present the School  and to give center stage to the programs especially designed for China.

We think that this represents a further step forward in the international scene for the School of Management, and it improves our visibility in China

WELCOME TO OUR BRAND-NEW WEBSITE

We are delighted to inform you that the new School of Management website is online.

The aim of this website is to present the School, highlighting the distinctive features of its two core structures, DIG and MIP. We will therefore be giving centre stage to both the research and training services and all the events aimed at the Community.

The site has a strong editorial line, which will help us to develop our expertise through the sharing of research content, the Faculty’s contributions and the success stories of students and alumni. We think that this represents a further step forward for the School of Management, in line with the process of integration between the School’s two souls, which has now been under way for some years. From today, our visibility on the international scene as a single entity will be even more apparent.

It is also with this idea in mind that we have decided to create a Chinese version of the site, and this will be available in a few months’ time.

Welcome to our School, welcome to our brand-new website

Alessandro Perego, Academic Director – Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering

Andrea Sianesi, Dean – MIP Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business