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Home 26 September 2018

October 8th: Engagement Day

The Institute of Management opens the doors to Alumni & Friends. A day to network and brainstorm at Scuola Sant’Anna. RSVP through this link

Home 29 August 2016

Nòva Open Innovation Days 2016

On the 30th of September Alberto will be present at the Nòva Open Innovation Days hosted by the University of Padova. More Info

Home, Policy 25 May 2016

Alberto at the EU Parliament

Today Alberto was at the European Parliament in Bruxelles in order to take part in the presentation of the manual «SME and Financial Engineering in…

Home 19 May 2016

Milan, Ambrosetti Tech Forum 2016

Alberto was the Innovation Advisor of The European House – Ambrosetti for the organization of the Technology Forum 2016. Alberto designed with the help of…

Home 10 December 2015

Italian Innovation in Chongqing

On November 18th and 19th I took part in the China-Italy Science, Technology and Innovation Week (CISTIW) in Chongqing. The CISTIW is the most important…

Home, Policy, Talks 25 May 2015

The SME Innovation Instrument, Horizon2020 and Talent Europe

In this presentation that I gave at the Italian Embassy in Washington DC, I provide a quick introduction to the Meridian Fellowship on Social Innovation and to my project, Talent Europe,
I then present some of the latest numbers regarding the implementation of the SME Innovation instrument, one of the most innovative parts of the 8th presentation Framework program called Horizon 2020
I also discuss about three concepts that I think might be interesting to explore as a basis of a useful comparison between Europe and US science and technology Policy.

Home, Policy, Talks 12 May 2015

Alberto in Washington as Meridian Social Innovation Fellow

On May 4, 2015, Meridian welcomed the inaugural cohort of the Meridian Social Innovation Fellowship to Washington, D.C. The eight Fellows – who hail from Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain – are global problem-solvers who bring together networks and resources to solve critical challenges facing their organizations, communities, and countries. Meridian has brought together this distinguished group to drive ground-breaking advancements in the fields of youth and women empowerment, cultural integration, entrepreneurship, science, technology, and education. Alberto joined the program to develop TalentEurope.

Home, Policy, Talks 9 July 2014

High Level Group on Innovation Policy Management

During 2014 I took part to the works of the High Level Group on Innovation Policy Management. This group of experts from Academia, Industry and Government worked on the definition of a set of recommendations for the European Innovation Ecosystem. The group met three times, in Dublin, in Amsterdam and in Rome, and it is due to produce the final report in the course of the month of August to the Italian Presidency of the European Council.

Ideas 24 February 2014

Alberto Bombassei: a dialogue on innovation

Alberto Di Minin interviews Alberto Bombassei, President of Brembo S.P.A. during the opening ceremony of Master MAINS, January 13th. The result is a dialogue on innovation, Kilometro Rosso and the history of Brembo.

Home, Policy, Talks 20 November 2013

Visit to China Nov 14th – 19th

Just coming home from the official trip of Minister Maria Chiara Carrozza to China. We traveled to Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, meeting a vibrant community of Italians, doing business, cultivating arts, studying and researching in this country. I was impressed by their enthusiasm and positive attitude towards future perspectives. During talks with high level officials of the Chinese Government, research centers and universities we emphasized the priority to increase scientific collaborations between China and Italy.

Home, Policy, Talks 5 July 2013

Innovation Policy and Smart Cities

This is the presentation (in Italian) that Andrea Paraboschi (SSSA) and I shared with the Green City Energy conference in Pisa. We illustrated the main guidelines of Minister Maria Chiara Carrozza’s agenda.

We discussed about the need to be focused, to be inclusive and to challenge Italian’s creativity and talent.

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Senza categoria 28 May 2013

Udinese Calcio: Strategic Agility of the Firm

Highlights
• We discuss how strategic agility is key to success in highly competitive contexts.
• In sport business it is extremely difficult to achieve both good sports and financial performance.
• Udinese Calcio has effectively balanced its diverging objectives through strategic agility.
• We identify the managerial practices and business model for an agile organization.
• We discuss how strategic agility can be achieved under resource constraints.

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Senza categoria 28 May 2013

Udinese Calcio: Strategic Agility of the Firm

Highlights
• We discuss how strategic agility is key to success in highly competitive contexts.
• In sport business it is extremely difficult to achieve both good sports and financial performance.
• Udinese Calcio has effectively balanced its diverging objectives through strategic agility.
• We identify the managerial practices and business model for an agile organization.
• We discuss how strategic agility can be achieved under resource constraints.

Home, Teaching 22 May 2013

Join our DBA Program!

Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and Grenoble Ecole de Management joined forces to offer a new exciting program, targeting managers, policy makers, executives at foundations/NPO, entrepreneurs all over Europe.
Ideal candidates are European professionals, from a wide variety of career backgrounds. These may include: management, sciences, humanities and technical and engineering fields. Typically participants have attained a high level of professional achievement and are likely to be in their thirties or forties.

Home, Research, Talks 12 May 2013

Alberto Chairing a Session at an EPO/OECD Conference

Munich, May 6th. Alberto was responsible for the session titled “How Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) can fuel open science and open innovation”. When asked what was a very important and neglected aspect in technology transfer, Alberto said “people, people, people!” It is very important to consider the professionalism and experience of researchers and managers involved in the process.

Home, Talks 5 May 2013

BlaBlaCar featured in Open for Innovation

BlaBlaCar is a very good example of a social platform turning into a great innovation, where users play a big role in shaping the success of the offering. Postoinauto.it, started by Olivier Bremer in 2009, happened to be at the right place at the right time, when the main investor in BlaBlaCar (Accel Partner) was hunting for companies to support the international expansion of the French company. Bremer was at the time managing the largest carsharing community in Italy at the time. “I got lucky” said to us Oliver, who is currently Country Manager for Italy… but luck is obviously only part of the story.

Home, Research 24 April 2013

Strategic Agility: the Case of Udinese Calcio accepted on EMJ

A new paper by Alberto and Andrea has been accepted for publication by the European Management Journal. This is the result of a nice collaboration with Federico Frattini, Guido Bortoluzzi and Mattia Bianchi. A lot of fun writing this paper and working on such a unique case study.

Home, Teaching 18 April 2013

Loccioni Business Game: Final lecture for Open Innovation Module

Andrea and I close our lectures for the joint class of Master MAINS and Master MAIN students here in Pisa with a business game. 5 groups of students were presented with some information about Loccioni, a very innovative company in the Marche region, going through an interesting phase of transformation of its R&D and innovation activities.

Home, Teaching 17 April 2013

Surviving the PhD – Edition 2013

Surviving the Phd™ 2013 Edition Instructor: Alberto Di Minin www.diminin.it At Scuola Sant’Anna, Doctoral Students in Management receive a special treatment. Surviving is a course I have designed whose goal is to introduce first years students to the PhD life, giving them an idea about what it takes to go through the program, and at the same time provide them with some methods, in a very interactive and colloquial way.

Home, Talks 15 April 2013

Open for Innovation: featuring Fantini Mosaici

Open for Innovation, our biweekly column on Affari & Finanza “La Repubblica” is back, profiling interesting companies, and linking them with a management theory. Monday we discussed about Fantini Mosaici.

Home, Teaching 5 March 2013

Master MaIn: Create your StartUp to pass my exam

Febr. 5th is Day 1 for my new class together with Andrea Tenucci and Andrea Paraboschi. We will accompany a very international class of master students through a series of lectures and exercise that will help them better understand what is a start-up company, and actually how to start one.

Home, Talks 28 February 2013

Getting Ready for some California Time

Alberto and Simone have organized a study & business tour for a group of Italian entrepreneurs to San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The group will stop by for lectures at U.C. Berkeley and Stanford. They will be hosted by the Italian Consulate General in San Francisco and they will have meetings at City Hall. Other stops feature the Culinary Institute of America, LinkedIn, Plug&Play, Skydeck, Google, Idean… etc etc
Alberto and Simone codeveloped this initiative with the young entrepreneurs of Confindustria Toscana, as a sort of continuation of the lecture series “Change Agents”, which was an interesting experiment. “The idea was to mix theory and practice, to provoke new thinking and allow these young entrepreneurs to become actors of innovation and new investment within their companies”, says Alberto. “I was very happy to read Giacomo Gellini’s interview on La Nazione, as he truly represented with his words the spirit of what I am trying to do with companies, in my executive education programs”.

Home, Research, Talks 24 February 2013

IP and Open Innovation

On March 25, Alberto and Dries will be the two keynotes at the Flanders Business School. They will present findings of their research in front…

Talks 31 January 2013

Mixing Theory & Practice

I am Research Fellow with the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, and I have been affiliated with ETLAtieto in Helsinki, the European Patent Office, the Open Innovation Corporation.

I have collaborated with the main Italian industrial and entrepreneurial associations (Confindustria, CNA), the Technology Transfer offices of various Italian Universities, as well as with the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Kauffman Foundation, and with the U.S. Department of State, through the American Embassy in Italy.

I have run programs of executive education or other initiatives with companies such as: ABB, Ansaldo Energia, Bassilichi, ENI, Finmeccanica, Fondamenta SGR, Knauf, Intesa San Paolo Loccioni, Lucchini, Telecom Italia. From time to time I also write about innovation on La Repubblica Affari & Finanza.

Talks 31 January 2013

Mixing Theory & Practice

I am Research Fellow with the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, and I have been affiliated with ETLAtieto in Helsinki, the European Patent Office, the Open Innovation Corporation.

I have collaborated with the main Italian industrial and entrepreneurial associations (Confindustria, CNA), the Technology Transfer offices of various Italian Universities, as well as with the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Kauffman Foundation, and with the U.S. Department of State, through the American Embassy in Italy.

I have run programs of executive education or other initiatives with companies such as: ABB, Ansaldo Energia, Bassilichi, ENI, Finmeccanica, Fondamenta SGR, Knauf, Intesa San Paolo Loccioni, Lucchini, Telecom Italia. From time to time I also write about innovation on La Repubblica Affari & Finanza.

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Teaching 29 January 2013

Teaching: Innovation Management

Alberto is currently teaching and supervising students at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa) and University of Twente (Enschede). His main teaching focuses on R&D and innovation…

Home, Teaching 15 January 2013

Skills and Tools for High Tech Entrepreneurs

February 13th: Every good story has an ending (or actually: “Ogni bel ballo stufa…”).
Last lecture for Skills & Tools 2013, with guest speakers, student presentations, and final goodbyes in Aula Magna.
Eight groups present their business models which they developed during the course. In certain case we have brand new ideas, in others an attempt to define a commercialization strategy for a project developed in the labs in Pisa and Pontedera.
How many of these presentations one day will turn into real companies? Definitely too early to say. The goal is to turn them into good evaluations! Nicola Redi, from TTVenture is the chair of the judging committee which helps Andrea and Alberto with comments and suggestions.

Home, Talks 1 December 2012

Intel Business Challenge 2013: the heat is on!

The campaign to look for the Italian Dreamteam (i.e. the 10 entrepreneurial teams that will challenge their European colleagues during Round 2), has officially started. Teams will have the opportunity to submit their application online till February the 22nd.

Home, Research, Talks 27 November 2012

Alberto discusses about the social media revolution with the clients of TD Group

Can we say that social media were the drivers of a second ICT revolution? Apparently so. In this presentation I try to show that there are many lessons that we can draw from previous disruptive changes in the industry, but that companies need to be outliers and define new business models and new business processes to leverage the advantaged offered them by new social medias.

Home, Teaching 22 November 2012

Discussion of the Project Works at Master Mains

The final act of Master MAINS A.Y. 2011/12 is taking place at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. 18 students, are back today in Aula Magna and present the result of their work in front of the faculty, academic and corporate advisors. Companies represented: Ansaldo Energia, CDC Point, Coop Italia, ENEL, Esaote, Finmeccanica, Hitachi Data System, IBM Italia, Intesa Sanpaolo, Selex-Elsag, SIA, Telecom Italia, Telespazio, Univergomma.

Home, Talks 16 November 2012

RENA 7th National Assembly in Florence

Theory meets practice, and young talents from many walks of life meet for the 7th Assemblea Generale of RENA. Rena is a national network of professionals: public and private managers, consultants, journalists and (yes…) researchers. Affiliates share a common drive to make a difference acting as positive actors of change, leading by example, with honesty and transparency.

Home, Talks 5 November 2012

Open for Innovation… in the Cloud

A management buyout, a profound knowledge of business process and the impact of ICT, an all-italian-team. These are the ingredients of this week’s episode of…

Home 4 November 2012

Back to Berkeley, 10 years later!

10 years have gone by since my first time in Berkeley. As a PhD Student at BRIE/City and Regional Planning/Haas it was an incredible experience. After my graduation, I found many excuses to be back in San Francisco and Berkeley, but now, 10 years after my first time in town, I find it somehow different. Berkeley has defined in a unique way the scholar and the person I am today, and going back is like a walk back memory lane.

Home, Research, Talks 31 October 2012

Safe Nests, Inter-firm Relationships in Groningen

Alberto was in Groningen to celebrate Dries Faems’ professorship.
Dries gave his inaugural lecture in fronts of colleagues, friends and family, and Alberto was part of the warm up band, during an innovation workshop focussed on innovation, inter-firm and intra-firm relationships.

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Home, Teaching 25 October 2012

Oct.25th: What a Day!

First of all I should extend my congratulations to Barbara Gilicze, who graduated (with honors!), after presenting her dissertation on social innovation. Barbara helped me…

Home, Teaching 14 October 2012

Alberto and Andrea Lecturing at Khalifa University (Emirates)

In the beautiful setting of the Sharjah campus, Khalifa University, Andrea and Alberto are teaching about technology management, and appropriability of Innovation in the Emirates.
A nice class of 25 phd engineering students in the field will hear from us about how to turn the result of their work into business opportunities, and how to interact with colleagues working in management. The teaching program is supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to introduce students around the world to Research in Italy.

Home, Teaching 11 October 2012

Knauf College in Viareggio

  Sales and Marketing manager from all over the world met in Viareggio for the 10th edition of the Knauf College. Managers took off for…

Home, Research 5 October 2012

Loccioni: implementing Open Innovation

Andrea and Alberto travel to Rosora, in the Marche, to meet with Loccioni top management and discuss about their Open Innovation strategy. The project started before the summer with extensive interviews in Loccioni, and focused on internal technology transfer and business development.

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Senza categoria 30 September 2012

Internationalization of R&D: Safe Nests in Global Nets

This paper documents the case of the wireless telecom industry to bring new empirical evidence to the debate on the internationalization of research and development (R&D) activities. The stickiness of core R&D projects to headquarters is related not only to organizational inertia and the unripe maturation of subsidiaries, as suggested by prior literature, but particularly to the HQ centralization of intellectual property (IP) management, which offers a high level of appropriability of R&D results. The unequal distribution of appropriability across corporate R&D networks is at the base of the formation of safe nests, domestic R&D centers that are sheltered from the forces of globalization because they offer a desirable setting for the exploitation of technologies deriving from a stronger coordination of inventive activities with the management of IP.