About

I am an Assistant Professor of Management at the Fisher College of Business of the Ohio State University. I study innovation, using causal inference, machine learning, and field work. My vita is here.

I grew up in central Italy. I lived in Rome, Dublin, Madrid, Washington, Milan, Shanghai, Brussels, and Philadelphia. My current base camp is Columbus. I am a digital nomad most of the year.

I have a BS in Business Administration from LUISS, a MS in Economics & Social Sciences from Bocconi, a MA in Economics, a MA in Statistics, and a PhD in Managerial Science & Applied Economics from Penn.

I did my doctoral work at Wharton. More about my experience is here. My dissertation explored the process of experimentation in early-stage ventures. My committee included Dan Levinthal, David Hsu, Alfonso Gambardella, Nicola Lacetera, and Karl Ulrich. This work was funded by the Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship, the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, the Rodney White Center for Financial Research, and the Russell Ackoff Doctoral Student Fellowship. I was 1 of 5 finalists in the STR Wiley Blackwell Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2020.

As I ventured through my PhD, I got to believe that a key driver of progress in research is the combination of diverse perspectives. To test that hypothesis, I co-created MIDAS, an interdisciplinary group of Wharton-based PhD students interested in innovation. That project evolved into WINDS, an interdisciplinary conference on innovation for PhD students from everywhere.

During my time in Philadelphia, I also played a lot of soccer. A peak moment of my soccer career was to challenge my favorite econometrician. At some point, I figured that our soccer team could do more than just play soccer. Based on that idea, I co-created Philadelphia Open Soccer. Through that experience, I received the Santander Community Award in 2017 and got to meet a Super Bowl Champion.

I started at Ohio State in Summer 2019. My OSU page is here. My home is the Fisher College of Business. Plus, I interact with a number of groups on campus, especially the Translational Data Analytics Institute and the STEAM Factory. I teach entrepreneurship in the BSBA program and in the MBA program. I was 1 of 40 Poets&Quants Best 40-Under-40 Business School Professors in 2022.

My core focus is innovation in early-stage firms. In particular, I study the learning process entrepreneurs experience as they generate ideas, develop products, and build companies. My GoogleScholar page is here. I write translation pieces at HBR.org, EIX.org, Knowledge@Wharton, WhartonMagazine, and LeadReadToday.

Beyond my core research, I am passionate about understanding the role of entrepreneurship in society. In particular, I believe entrepreneurship can be a powerful tool in addressing the challenge of forced migration. To test that hypothesis, I created the New American Entrepreneurship Project. This work was funded by the Kauffman Knowledge Challenge. More about the project is here and here.