A ERC Grant to Bocconi to Study Managerial Decisions

The European Research Council (ERC), the most important European body supporting research, has once again recognized the quality of research conducted at Bocconi, awarding a €2mln ERC Advanced Grant to one of its professors.

Alfonso Gambardella, Full Professor and Head of the Department of Management and Technology, is among the 209 researchers (55 in the social sciences and humanities) funded with the most coveted of the grants awarded by the ERC.

Eight of the grants go to scholars working in Italian institutions, with 14 going to researchers of Italian nationality.

Alfonso Gambardella won his ERC grant with SAIM (A Scientific Approach to Innovation Management), a project that has the ambition to conduct a randomized controlled trial on a scale unprecedented in management studies and rarely reached in economics and social sciences. Its ultimate goal: to test whether entrepreneurs and managers who adopt a scientific approach make more effective decisions and achieve better results. Small- and medium-scale studies have already shown the superiority of this approach and now, Professor Gambardella wants to confirm the result on a larger scale (as in clinical trials of drugs and vaccines) in six countries and aims as well as to understand the mechanisms that lead to better results.

With the new grant, Bocconi has now had 40 ERC Grants hosted since the start of the European program in 2007.

"The awarding of ERC grants to the Gambardella project testifies to the originality and scientific rigor that Bocconi professors apply to the study of each discipline," says the University's Rector, Gianmario Verona. "Our academic fields have expanded in recent years to include economics, management, political science, law and computer science, with the assurance that each of them is supported by the production of original research of the highest quality."


The Advanced Grants are assigned to active researchers of any nationality who have a track-record of significant research achievements in the last 10 years. For researchers in the previous stages of their career, the ERC provides Starting Grants and Consolidator Grants, while the Synergy Grants are reserved to groups of scholars ready to join forces to tackle challenging issues. Research funded by the ERC must be conducted in a public or private research organization located in one of the EU Member States or Associated Countries. The funding covers a maximum period of five years and mostly covers the work of researchers and staff employed in the project.