External Faculty
Davide Amabile
Head of Execution & Project Management Practice
The European House - Ambrosetti
Davide is a senior management consultant with a strong experience in innovation execution and program/ project management. In The European House - Ambrosetti since January 2015, he is leading the Execution & Project Management Practice. During his career, he has supported more than 70 clients from different business and countries.
Between 2006 and 2015, Davide has been Vice President Knowledge Management of Finmeccanica (now Leonardo), leading one of the global Aerospace & Defence initiative in Project Management. He has been the only Italian member of the Project Management Institute Global Executive Council in the US and of APM (Association for Project Management) in UK. Davide has been Senior Manager at Accenture in the Management Consulting area supporting several companies in Italy and around the world in their transformation programs. He started his career (1995-1998) as Project Manager in AnsaldoBreda (now Hitachi Rail). Graduated in Electronics Engineering at the University of Pisa, he got the Master Degree in Innovation Management at Scuola Superiore S. Anna in 1994.
Founder and first President of the S. Anna Innovation Master Alumni Association (Ammisa), in January 2020 he was nominated Professional Affiliate at the Institute of Management. Since 2006 he has been teaching Project & Risk Management at the S. Anna innovation master programme.
Antonio Carbone
Head of Innovation Department - APRE
Antonio is Head of Innovation Department at APRE – Italian Agency for the Promotion of European Research. He is H2020 SME and Access to risk finance National Contact Point at APRE in Italy as well as expert in the related EC H2020 "SMEs and Access to risk finance" Programme Committee. He is also coordinator of Access2EIC – Eu Network of EIC (FET, SME, Finance) National Contact Points - NCPs.
Across 10 years of professional experience in the field of European R&I Policies and Funding Programmes he has been advisor of the Italian Government in the Negotiation of Research and Innovation Framework Programmes; of several professional researchers, helping them to turn their research output into potential products and services; of SMEs and Start Ups for enhancing their innovation management capacities. He can also count on an experience of 100+ training courses in the field above mentioned to PhD, researchers, Start ups, SMEs and large industry.
Luca De Biase
Senior Editor - Sole24Ore
Luca De Biase is Senior Editor at Il Sole24Ore, the main financial daily newspaper in Italy, where he leads the innovation section which he founded. Luca teaches Knowledge Management at the university of Pisa and Journalism at Sissa in Trieste. He is a member of the Mission Assembly for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities at the European Commission and member of the commission organized by the Italian Government to study the phenomenon of online hate. Luca is a member of the scientific committee Fondazione Innovazione Urbana in Bologna. He is co-fouder of the association Italia Startup. He is Chair of the International Media and Marketing Committee for ESOF 2020. He has published several books. The most recent are: “Il lavoro del futuro” (2018); "Come saremo” (2016), with Telmo Pievani; "Homo Pluralis" (2015). The Media Ecology Association awarded Luca with "The James W. Carey Award" for Outstanding Media Ecology Journalism in 2016.
Alfredo De Massis
Full Professor - Free University of Bolzano
Alfredo De Massis is Professor of Entrepreneurship & Family Business and the Founding Director of the Centre for Family Business Management at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. He is also affiliated with Lancaster University Management School, UK. His research focuses on innovation and strategic management of family enterprises. In September 2015, Family Capital ranked him among the world’s top 25 star professors for family business. He serves as Associate Editor of Family Business Review and he's incoming editor of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. His research has been published widely in leading academic and professional journals including AMJ, SMJ, JMS, JOM, JBV, ETP, RP, JPIM, AMP, FBR, JBE, CMR, AMLE, and he has been featured in various media outlets including Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, CNBC, Il Sole24Ore, Porta a Porta (RAI 1). He serves on the boards of several public and private associations and companies around the world.
Gualtiero Fantoni
Associate Professor - University of Pisa
Manufacturing Engineering
PhD in Automation, Robotic and Bioengineering at University of Pisa in 2005. Associate professor of “New product development” and “Manufacturing engineering” at the University of Pisa. Main research interests are in the field of robotics applied to manufacturing, production engineering and maintenance. Deep interest in natural language processing applied to technical texts (patents, papers, tenders, tech specifications). From 2016 his main focus is on Industry 4.0 where his research activities and entrepreneurship ventures merged.
Filippo Fasulo
Director - Italy China Foundation's Centre on Business Research
Filippo Fasulo is Director at the Italy China Foundation's Centre on Business Research (CeSIF) and Associate Research Fellow at ISPI. In 2014, he earned a Ph.D. in Politics and Istitutions from the Catholic University of Milan that was awarded the Cesare Bonacossa Prize by the University of Pavia. In 2012, he received a MSc in China in Comparative Perspectives at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Since 2011, he has been lecturing on China-related topics at the Catholic University of Milan and since 2017 at Scuola Superiore S.Anna in Pisa. He is also Academic Secretary for Far Eastern Studies at the Accademia Ambrosiana in Milan and member of the editorial board of Mondo Cinese, the most important Italian journal on contemporary China. In 2017 he was selected to attend the Young Sinologist Visiting Programme in Shanghai. Since 2016 he is the author of CeSIF's annual report on China, the most authoritative document in Italian language on China’s economy. Indeed, the foreword of its 2019's edition was written by the Italian Prime Minister, Prof. Giuseppe Conte.
Fosca Giannotti
Director - Research of Computer Science
KDD Lab, ISTI-CNR
Fosca Giannotti is a director of research of computer science at the Information Science and Technology Institute “A. Faedo” of the National Research Council, Pisa, Italy. Fosca Giannotti is a pioneering scientist in mobility data mining, social network analysis and privacy-preserving data mining. Fosca leads the Pisa KDD Lab - Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Laboratory, a joint research initiative of the University of Pisa and ISTI-CNR, founded in 1994 as one of the earliest research lab centered on data mining. Fosca's research focus is on social mining from big data: smart cities, human dynamics, social and economic networks, ethics and trust, diffusion of innovations. She has coordinated tens of European projects and industrial collaborations. Fosca is currently the coordinator of SoBigData, the European research infrastructure on Big Data Analytics and Social Mining, an ecosystem of ten cutting edge European research centres providing an open platform for interdisciplinary data science and data-driven innovation. Recently she became the recipient of a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant entitled XAI – Science and technology for the explanation of AI decision making. Sehe is member of the steering board of CINI-AI lab. in the expert group for the Digital,Industry and Space of HE.
Marie Antoinette Orsini
Founder - Challenge Learning
Marie Antoinette Orsini (AKA Nanette Orsini) is founder of Challenge Learning, a training and consulting company. Her goal is helping executives “shape the culture” of their organization by strengthening the facets of their leadership: interpersonal skills, communication, negotiation and strategic thinking. Nanette collaborates with the United Nations (UN) International Trade Organization training consultants in Latin America and Africa. For Center for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, Geneva, Switzerland, she prepared delegations and diplomats for multilateral negotiation in various forums. She mediates encounters between private companies, international organizations and pressure groups on Public Affairs issues. She worked at the UN, Center for Human Rights in Geneva, on enforced or Involuntary Disappearances in Latin America. Nanette studied at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and holds a Master from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, in Grenoble (FR) and Canterbury (UK).
Dino Pedreschi
Full Professoer - Computer Science - University of Pisa
KDD Lab, ISTI-CNR
Dino Pedreschi is a professor of computer science at the University of Pisa, and a pioneering scientist in data science. He co-leads the Pisa KDD Lab - Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Laboratory, a joint research initiative of the University of Pisa and the Information Science and Technology Institute of the Italian National Research Council. His research focus is on big data analytics and mining and their impact on society. He is a founder of the Business Informatics MSc program at Univ. Pisa, a course targeted at the education of interdisciplinary data scientists, and of SoBigData.eu, the European H2020 Research Infrastructure “Big Data Analytics and Social Mining”. Dino has been a visiting scientist at Barabasi Lab (Center for Complex Network Research) of Northeastern University, Boston, and earlier at the University of Texas at Austin, at CWI Amsterdam and at UCLA. In 2009, Dino received a Google Research Award for his research on privacy-preserving data mining. Dino is a member of the expert group in AI of the Italian Ministry of research and the director of the Data Science PhD program at Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Dino is a co-PI of the 2019 ERC grant XAI. He has been nominate representative for Italy for Artificial Intelligence at OECD.
Mario Rapaccini
Associate Professor - University of Florence
Innovation Management and Business Strategy
Mario Rapaccini, Master Degree “Magna Cum Laude” in Mechanical Engineering and Ph.D. in Energy Management, is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Florence, where he teaches Innovation Management and Business Strategy. For many years he has been previously part of the Faculty Staff of the Sant’Anna University (MAINS) and of the School of Business of Milan Polytechnic and Bergamo University (meGMI). He is passionate about digital technologies, and his primary research fields include the digitalization and servitization of manufacturing companies. He has been involved in many professional training programs and innovation projects, commissioned by global companies such as Ricoh, Canon, Engie, Enel Green Power, Epson, Electrolux, Unicoop, Manutencoop, CoopService, General Electric, Service Max, Baker Hughes, Tim, Leonardo. He is also passionate about entrepreneurship, and among the founders of the ASAP Service Management Forum, the IBIS research lab and of Smart operations, a spinoff company of the University of Florence. More information here.
Nicola Redi
Managing Partner - Venture Factory
Managing Partner of Venture Factory, keyman of VV 3 Technology Transfer fund. Nicola holds an MS in Aerospace Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, an MBA from Bocconi University and a Ph.D. from Aston University in Birmingham. He previously served Vertis as Investment Director, TTVentures as Chief Investment & Technology Officer and was founder and CEO of SeedLab Startup accelerator. Prior to entering the venture capital industry, Nicola held global and EMEA responsibilities in research, new product development, and operations in leading multinational companies. He was Italian representative in the High-Level Group for Innovation Policy Management.
Guido Paolo Ridoni
Managing Partner - Challenge Learning Italia
Guido is a trainer and a consultant; in the last 25 years he has worked with managers from the private, public, sport and military sector, in about one hundred organisations, in more than twenty countries. His area of expertise is Organizational Behavior, with a specific interest in leadership in complex environments, team development, and cultural change in organizations. He has been collaborating with the Scuola Superiore S.Anna’s Institute of Management since 2001, lecturing extensively in Master and Executive programs. After graduating summa cum laude in Philosophy, he attended Organizational Behaviour courses in USA (UCI Merage School of Business) and GB (Cambridge Judge School of Business).
Simone Tani
Adjunct Professor - LUISS Guido Carli
Simone Tani has been working in managerial and institutional positions in the city of Florence for over 20 years, after an early career as HR Manager in General Electric. He served the city as deputy mayor for innovation and economic development, director for economic promotion, tourism and innovation. He was also director for EU policies, Director of Strategic Planning, and Vicepresident of the University-City Foundation. He is focused on personal, organizational and urban change and on innovative policies. In 2016-18 he joined the Economic Delivery Unit of the Italian Prime Minister. He has advised the launch of the School of Transnational Governance of the European University Institute and the Center for Technology and Global Affairs of the Oxford University. Simone teaches leadership and organizational change at LUISS University and LUISS Business School. He is co-founder of UrbanLife and Ulis, two start ups focused on urban and social innovation. He holds a laurea in Economics at the University of Florence, an MBA in Management of Innovation and a PhD in Economics of Innovation from Scuola Superiore S. Anna of Pisa.