3 fully-funded scholarships available

Project Scholarship 1

"Evaluation and validation of innovative business models and services for sustainable, safe and inclusive mobility" (B4S.1)

The recipient of this scholarship will carry out research on policies, business models, services, operational and organizational processes - oriented towards sustainability in the field of mobility and of transport. In this regard, the research unfolds in three phases: (i) systematic collection of data and information; (ii) assess the social, environmental, and economic impact of projects and innovations in the field of sustainable mobility; (iii) make a decisive contribution to guiding public policies and private initiatives.

Systematic collection of data and information allows the mapping of innovation projects initiated by public, private and non-profit operators in the field of sustainable mobility. This mapping is aimed at investigating the drivers, barriers, and critical success factors of projects - at an institutional, technological, environmental, social, organizational level, etc. - and to identify the strategic and operational actions that, even in a quintuple-helix perspective, can support its development and dissemination over time.

The assessment of social, environmental, and economic impact of projects and innovations in the field of sustainable mobility covers all phases of the life cycle of the impact of the sustainable mobility project or service in question: from the design phase of the impact framework, to monitoring and evaluation, up to the final stage of reporting and dissemination of the impact.

Diversified data and information sources will be analyzed to obtain a meaningful mapping of benchmarks:

-       deriving from policy and design solutions adopted in urban and rural contexts to connect investments effectively and efficiently in sustainable infrastructures with sustainable mobility solutions.

-       relating to policies and significant initiatives in terms of cultural transition from conventional mobility to sustainable mobility.

-       with respect to the relevance of sustainable mobility in the materiality choices made by companies with reference to materiality matrices and sustainability reports conducted using international standards (GRI, SAASB).

The research path aims to make a decisive contribution to the design, production, and distribution at national and local level of impact-oriented policy recommendations, aimed at guiding public policies and private initiatives in the light of the insights provided and the innovations developed in the field sustainable mobility, thus contributing to the sustainability and future replicability of the intervention in a logic of impact-oriented multistakeholder ecosystem.

Project Scholarship 2

The financing of innovative start-ups (B4S.2)

The recipient of this scholarship will carry out research in the field of entrepreneurship and technology transfer, focusing on financing innovation. The financing of innovative start-ups investigates the conditions that favour securing financial resources, including for instance the characteristics of the project e.g., the value proposition, founding team composition, the value of the intellectual property, and the collaborative links with established partners- as well as communication strategies e.g., rhetoric, language used, etc. The research project aims at investigating the antecedents and consequences of different financial sources for an innovative start-up performance. It will also look at the relationship between innovative and sustainable funding opportunities (e.g., crowdfunding, venture capital, Initial Coin Offerings or Security Token Offerings) over a new venture’s lifecycle. The project will also investigate the role of media coverage, including social media in attracting the attention of investors and other stakeholder audiences. The project should provide valuable implications for the design of acceleration activities of innovative start-ups and the training of future entrepreneurial teams.

The project will unfold into three phases: (i) a critical review of the literature and elaboration of a theoretical model; (ii) elaboration of a methodology for the empirical analysis, based on both qualitative (e.g., content analysis) and quantitative technique (e.g., linear, and nonlinear model estimation), and data collection; (iii) data analysis and elaboration of the implications for theory and management practice.

Project Scholarship 3

The management of university-industry R&D projects (B4S.3)

The recipient of this scholarship will carry out research in the field of innovation ecosystems and entrepreneurship. The evolution of an innovation ecosystem depends on three key dimensions: (i) the quality of institutions and organizations operating in the ecosystem – e.g., universities, business firms, venture capitalists, industry-university research centers, regional public agencies, and policymakers; (ii) the set of goals and interests of the stakeholders operating in the ecosystem, along with their knowledge and capabilities; (iii) the competitive and cooperative relationships among stakeholders. The university-industry collaboration may play a crucially important role in the growth of an innovation ecosystem. By focusing on this dimension of the innovation ecosystem, the project will look at the dynamics of specific collaborative projects carried out within the MUSA innovation ecosystem.  Adopting an open innovation perspective, the research will dig deep into the micro-foundations of university-industry collaborative research to understand the mechanisms through which open innovation leads to value creation and value appropriation, the complementarities and the solution of interests and institutional logics misalignment between partners, and the role of other actors involved in the project (e.g., lead users). The project should provide valuable implications for designing and executing collaborative R&D projects.

The project will unfold into three phases: (i) critical review of the literature and elaboration of theoretical models; (ii) elaboration of a methodology for the empirical analysis, based on qualitative research techniques of data collection (e.g., participant observation, interviews, focus group, archival data) and data analysis (e.g., grounded theory, visual mapping, and temporal bracketing) ;(iii) elaboration of the implications for theory and management practice.