Alessio Cozzolino has been shortlisted for the INFORMS' Best Dissertation Award

HIS PHD DISSERTATION LOOKS AT TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE

Research on the impacts of technological innovation on traditional industries abounds – particularly concerning those circumstances when the core knowledge of incumbents in a given sector is destroyed. Alessio Cozzolino, who completed his PhD in Business Administration and Management last March, investigated the opposite situation, namely one in which technological changes dismantle the incumbents’ complementary assets (those specialized assets, infrastructures and capabilities that are necessary to support the successful commercialization and marketing of a product) while preserving their fundamental know-how.

In April Cozzolino’s dissertation, titled Three Essays on Technological Changes and Competitive Advantage: Evidence from the Newspaper Industry, was selected as one of the four finalists of INFORMS Conference (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences), the largest society in the world for professionals in the field of operations research, management science and analytics. Cozzolino was invited to present his dissertation during the special session Best Dissertation Award finalists – TIMES section (Technology, Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship) of the INFORMS Annual Conference, which will take place from 1 to 4 November 2015 in Philadelphia. The first of the three essays that constitute the dissertation of Cozzolino had already been awarded an honourable mention in the 2013 Strategic Management Society Annual International Conference in Atlanta.

Through a rich collection of quantitative and qualitative data and the adoption of mixed methodologies, the analysis carried out by Cozzolino provides a remarkable contribution to the understanding of technological changes, competences, value creation and platform markets, as well as significant insights for managers and policy makers.
 

by Elisa Bazzani