Current Research

SFR – Coping with the Expiration of Competitive Advantage in the 21^st Century (01/01/23-31/12/24): This project focuses on the expiration of competitive advantage which can cause freefall of firm performance in a very short period of time as in the case of Eli Lilly’s Prozac the “product of the century” losing 73% of its share of new prescriptions to generic products two weeks after its patent expiration and Copaxone causing nearly 12% drop in pre-market trading of Teva’s shares after losing patent protection to generic competitors. Despite the prevalence of this phenomenon strategic management research has offered limited insights into firms that lose their competitive advantage. There is virtually no research on how firms cope with the expected loss of their competitive advantage such as in the case of pharmaceutical firms that foresee the expiration of their key patents. We have three objectives: 1) to identify strategies that firms use to cope with the expected expiration of competitive advantage 2) to investigate the effectiveness of these strategies and 3) to study the interaction effect of these strategies e.g. between timing and strategies and combination of strategies.
PI: Dovev Lavie
Project funded by the Strategy Research Foundation
Women in science and technology: career impediments and the child penalty (01/09/24-31/10/27): The overall project is studying the following question: Women face difficult trade-offs in juggling the demands of working life and family life. The Nordic countries have responded to this through the introduction of ‘family-friendly’ policies whereby women could stay on paid parental leave. These policies have contributed to high labor force participation rates for women and lower so-called “child penalties” in earnings. There remain however potential adverse consequences of parental leave in high-skilled jobs that build upon the continuous accumulation of knowledge: workers suffer from a “burden of knowledge” in keeping up with an ever-expanding knowledge frontier in their field and time away from the job can lead to quick depreciation of knowledge. Thus, parental leave may favor women’s participation in the labor market generally but jobs characterized by rapid knowledge accumulation may suffer. The project presents a proposal for comparative research across the Nordic countries with an international and gender-diversified team of established researchers.
PI: Myriam Mariani
Project funded by the Copenhagen Business School
Taltech Industrial: Industrial Strategy and Competitiveness Studies at TalTech (01/10/20-30/06/24): The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the research excellence of Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) Estonia in (1) evolution of industrial value chains (clusters) in the era of the 4th industrial revolution (2) catching-up dynamics and windows of opportunities for upgrading along the global value chains and by applying (3) advanced data science methods in these fields. To reach this objective the project will bolster a strategic partnership between TalTech as the beneficiary and Bocconi University (UB-ICRIOS) Aalto University and Utrecht University (UU-UF) as the key knowledge providers. The network will allow 1) to co-create more socially-relevant research that will benefit industrialist’s policy makers and citizens; and will 2) foster policy learning and the development of more effective policies that meet the needs and expectations of the society; and 3) establish executive training system for improving the accessibility of the cutting-edge research for businesses and policy makers.
PI: Roberto Mavilia
Project funded by the European Union (Horizon 2020 fund)
CatChain: Catching-Up along the Global Value Chain: Models, Determinants and Policy Implications (01/05/18-29/02/24): the project is based on a research project integrated with a higher education agenda. It is designed to build and test a multidisciplinary approach bridging two streams of literature: one on catching–up and one on Global Value Chains (GVCs) in the context of the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). It pays also particular attention to the role of different Business Models (BMs) in entering learning and upgrading for fostering a process of country–level catching–up from different sectoral perspectives. The main aims of the project are: 1) to identify whether and how a country should focus more on developing domestic trade networks to develop sophistication and upgrade before entering into (the more competitive environment of) GVCs; or whether it should improve its infrastructure and networks in regional value chains by implementing the RIS3 strategy to support economic transformation; 2) to identify the emerging Business Models underpinning the successful entering learning and upgrading in GVCs and export after analysing and validating meaningful case studies in different sectors and countries.
PI: Roberto Mavilia
Project funded by the European Union (Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions)
Further information
Press release
SAIM: A Scientific Approach to Innovation Management (01/09/21-31/08/26): Innovation depends on the ability to make decisions under uncertainty. However, evidence suggests that managers and entrepreneurs do not have good methods to make these decisions that often depend on gut feelings and biases. This is a serious problem that explains in part the decline in research productivity or the high rates of entrepreneurial failure. At the aggregate level it translates into poor rates of economic growth and low returns from the massive public and private resources invested worldwide in entrepreneurship. This project argues that managers and entrepreneurs can improve their ability to make these decisions by adopting a scientific approach based on the formulation of models tested with data such as scientists do. It proposes to conduct a very large-scale RCT in five international sites to provide solid evidence and claim that this approach can be employed extensively to generate aggregate implications. The scale of this RCT can produce three important novelties: 1) provide external validity by testing the approach in different contexts from high-tech to bottom-of-the-pyramid entrepreneurs; 2) compare it to other approaches in innovation management and entrepreneurship; 3) estimate its impact using measures of the adoption of the scientific approach and test the mechanisms with which it affects performance. The results of this RCT are ground-breaking because they can: (i) change the way we think innovation management and entrepreneurship; (ii) encourage the practical application of many economic and managerial theories ignored by managers or entrepreneurs in spite of their practical prescriptions; (iii) help to rethink the curricula of business schools by making a scientific approach to management more prominent and by revamping the application of economic and managerial theories; (iv) improve the mentorship of the many public and private initiatives that support entrepreneurship worldwide.
PI: Alfonso Gambardella
Project funded by the European Union (European Research Council – ERC – Program)
The geography of return migration in Italy: the role of STEM workers and PhD students (30/11/23-29/11/25): the project will study the diaspora networks of return migration of Italian high skill workers. Pavia University is the leader of the project, and Bocconi is a partner.
PI: Stefano Breschi
Project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (PRIN: Progetti di ricerca di rilevante interese nazionale – Bando 2022)
Knowledge flows across the borders for the green digital transition (30/11/23-29/11/25): The green digital transformations have the potential of making countries more resilient and sustainable while at the same time opening new business opportunities for companies. Nevertheless, there is still not enough overlap in the policy arena of environmental sustainability and digitalization. This is the case of the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) in which the green and digital transitions are addressed in two separate missions. The urgency of better understanding the interactions between the green and digital transitions is clearly indicated at the level of European Commission in the 2022 Strategic Foresight Report. According to the Commission digital technologies provide functions that can catalyze the green transition (e.g. monitoring and tracking can propel the circular economy). But the development of the full potential of the green and digital transitions will depend on the ability to develop new knowledge and technologies which combine both elements. To foster these research and innovation efforts it is essential to develop an innovation and technological ecosystem promoting transdisciplinary research and combining digital and green knowledge that enable transformational change. Against this backdrop the project investigates how the knowledge base of green digital technologies develops both at the macro level of countries and at the micro level of firms and sectors with a focus on the energy and transport industries. The main objective is to understand which countries and firms can leverage external knowledge sources to develop green digital innovations. To address this research aim we focus on two key knowledge channels for combining different competencies: foreign direct investments and international collaborations in co-patenting involving firms and universities and research institutions.
PI: Stefano Breschi
Project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (PRIN: Progetti di ricerca di rilevante interese nazionale – Bando 2022 PNRR)
Managing sustainability tensions for change (28/09/23-27/09/25): Despite the mounting pressure for organizations to reduce their negative social and environmental (S&E) footprint results are still disappointing. Important changes in the processes and products are needed to effectively reach S&E results together with economic sustainability. However, as profit-seeking and S&E aspects involve desirable yet conflicting objectives multiple tensions emerge when aiming to address both. Confronted with such tensions some firms change and find successful ways to integrate S&E concerns in their activities while others still perpetuate wrongdoing giving priority to the profit-seeking goals. We aim to investigate “What factors make organizations effectively address the tensions between profit-seeking and S&E goals? And what factors prevent them to do so We aim at understanding how their different W&A allow different actors to deal with tensions in an array of ways along the value chain. Overall the project aims at producing relevant and actionable knowledge. Accordingly, an important attention will be devoted to effectively translating the academic knowledge developed within the project to a wider audience and in particular to: i) regional/national/EU policy makers; ii) managers activists and consultants; iii) knowledge and media intermediaries iv) students.
PI: Anne Jacqueminet
Project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (PRIN: Progetti di ricerca di rilevante interese nazionale – Bando 2022)
LIFTEU: Lobbying and Inequality: Firm Strategy in the EU (01/05/24-30/04/26): The prevalence of lobbying in the EU has become a cause for concern. The 50 most active lobbying firms spent spent EUR 90 million in 2015, and by 2022 the figure will be EUR 120 million. This raises questions about the ethical considerations of the lobbying activities of large companies and how their competitors can keep up. LIFTEU will investigate the imbalance in access and benefits of lobbying and its impact on inequality. We will build a database to track lobbying activity in the EU and examine how it affects market power, industry, industry concentration, firm size, access to policymakers and business performance. In Italy, the case is particularly worrying: there is no register, yet Italian companies engage in a considerable lobbying activity. With LIFTEU we will understand the extent to which corporate lobbying contributes to the spread of inequality.
PI: Nilanjana Dutt
Project funded by the Cariplo Foundation
POLISS – H2020 IF:Smart Specialisation is a successful innovation policy concept which has become a cornerstone of the European cohesion policy and the European 2020 agenda. SmartSpec has the objective of fostering regional innovation and promoting sustainable and inclusive growth in the EU. SmartSpec also addresses several of the Sustainable Development Goals. However the early implementation of SmartSpec policies has raised concerns among scholars and policy makers who have pointed to a number of gaps in its conceptualisation design and implementation. POLISS (“Policies for Smart Specialisation”) will tackle these gaps with the aim of making the design implementation and evaluation of Smart Spec policies more effective in Europe. POLISS is a joint collaboration of 8 leading European universities and 14 partners spanning local governments development agencies international organizations research institutes and private companies. POLISS brings together a diverse set of actors from all the fields contributing to SmartSpec; therefore it adopts a multidisciplinary approach by integrating their insights and knowledge. Building on their expertise and everyday engagement with SmartSpec policies POLISS aims at: a) providing new systematic evidence and methodological tools to scholars policy makers and local practitioners for designing and assessing SmartSpec actions in EU regions and beyond; b) building a PhD programme where a new generation of experts in regional development and innovation policy will be trained and once graduated will be possibly employed in regional national and European private or public organisations that work on regional development and innovation; c) providing a forum for coordinating the vast community of researchers and practitioners working on local development and innovation which is often sparse and fragmented.

GOTAM Cities – H2020 IF: We live in a rapidly urbanising world where the most part of the world population both in advanced and emerging economies live and work in cities. These dense agglomerations of individuals generate significant economic benefits which have been widely investigated and documented in the economic literature. It has been indeed observed that despite densely populated urban areas might show high wages and locational costs they still attract most innovative activities and skilled workers. In such a global race the European Union (henceforth EU) is apparently lagging behind in comparison with the US and other Anglo-Saxon economies (e.g. Canada and Australia) despite the several policy initiatives put in place since the launch of the Lisbon Strategy including the Europe 2020 Strategy and the 2009 Blue Card Directive all of them aiming at attracting the best and the brightest to the European Union. These declared ambitions could be frustrated even further since the EU along with other countries is experiencing a widespread backlash against immigration. The diffusion of such anti-immigration sentiment is also worrisome because the recovery from the Great Recession of 2008 is far from being in sight for many EU regions while the access to a diverse set of skills via high skilled immigrants could boost the innovative sectors needed for economic growth. The general aim of the GOTaM project is to understand how talents are attracted to cities and how they impact on the innovative performance and overall prosperity of the cities in destination countries. The project will be hosted by ICRIOS and the principle investigator will be given a contract with Bocconi for the duration of the project.

Knowledge Diversity Building by Inventors - H2020 ITN:Why do some inventors build up knowledge in a broad variety of technological areas while others stick to their field of expertise? Recent research has shown that inventor teams involving an individual with diverse knowledge are more likely to introduce breakthrough inventions. In the light of a general trend towards specialization and teamwork this finding raises concern about an undersupply of breakthrough inventions and warrants policy intervention to stimulate individual knowledge diversity. However to design effective policy instruments we need to know how highly skilled knowledge workers make decisions regarding the scope of their expertise throughout their careers. To this end the proposed research aims to explicate the mechanisms driving knowledge diversity. The researcher will be supervised by prof. Alfonso Gambardella. decisions of individual inventors

Technological change industry evolution and employment dynamics – PRIN:The aim of this project is to develop an integrated analysis of the anatomy and dynamics of innovation processes and the ensuing patterns of industrial change and employment dynamics starting from the modes in which new knowledge is incorporated in business firms all the way to the processes of innovation-driven “Schumpeterian” competition. This project will be carried out using advanced statistical and econometric methodologies applied both at the firm and sectoral level of analysis. Crucially large scale datasets deriving from different sources will be merged. Empirical results will be interpreted at the light of comprehensive theoretical models able to account for the economic impact of technological change the emergence of product and process innovation and the presence of different institutional regimes within the labour market.

Entrepreneurs As Scientists: When and How Start-ups Benefit from A Scientific Approach to
Decision Making - PRIN:In this project Bocconi University Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino will collaborate to study the implications of a scientific approach to entrepreneurial decision making. Entrepreneurs using a scientific approach select information and make decisions about their business mirroring the approach used by researchers when developing and testing theories in scientific research. We focus on three questions 1 What is the impact of a scientific approach on the decision of an entrepreneur to select/develop a business idea 2 Which contingencies influence the adoption of the scientific approach 3 What are the effects of the scientific approach in later-stage entrepreneurial firms.