Managerial Insights

2024-10-29 Lorenzo Diaferia, Leonardo De Rossi, Gianluca Salviotti

Implementing AI in Business: a Five-Phase Roadmap

We can identify two main approaches to leveraging AI in companies today. The first focuses on products and services, while the second emphasizes processes. In the first approach, AI is used to enhance existing products with new features or to develop entirely new, technology-driven products. In the second, AI acts as a tool for evolving current processes or enabling new processes that were previously unattainable. These two broad application areas can also be examined through a different lens: distinguishing between externally oriented uses –those that impact customer-facing processes and products ...

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2024-10-24 Andrea Ciacci and Lara Penco

Unveiling the Nature of Big Data Analytics Capabilities

Introduction Big data represents a disruptive paradigm shift for businesses (Chauhan et al., 2022; George et al., 2014; Ekbia et al., 2015). According to McAfee and Brynjolfsson (2012), firms that anchor their activities on data show productivity rates and profitability that are 5% or 6% higher than their counterparts. Data-driven firms are business organizations that build tools, abilities, and culture on data (Anderson, 2015; Persaud and Zare, 2024). To leverage the potential of data effectively, the various roles in these firms are often structured into multiple teams, each possessing complementary ...

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2024-10-21 Gianmario Verona

Making Decisions in the Era of Complexity

The fundamental problem we face in a complex environment is our limited capacity to make predictions. Cases in point: At year’s end 2021, who thought that Putin would have the nerve to challenge the West by invading Ukraine just weeks after New Year's? An invasion that sparked an energy crisis that further fueled the upsurge in inflation, the economic demon that was almost forgotten for years. And in late 2000, who could have even imagined 9/11 happening the following year? (Back then, the United States was working on a space shield to defend against a new Cold War; Al Qaeda’s international ...

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2024-10-17 Francesco Billari

Building the Future with Demography

Think future, build future. The strategies of companies, institutions, and corporations are based on approaches that project today onto tomorrow. Among these, one approach remains underutilized: the analysis of change through the lens of demography. Although demographic change may seem slow and almost imperceptible, this very phenomenon is one of the most powerful forces shaping our economic, social, and political future – a true megatrend. To envision the future and build a sustainable tomorrow, it is essential to adopt a demographic perspective. By starting with demography and then exploring ...

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2024-10-16 Andrea Beltratti, Alessia Bezzecchi

Transition Finance, Sustainability and AI

In recent years, major European banks have developed a list of sectors populated by companies with high CO2 emissions. The concept of "transition finance" is primarily about working with these companies to identify and achieve shared decarbonization goals, typically by 2030. However, as we know, in economics "everything is interconnected," so the list may not be exhaustive or entirely stable, requiring updates based on new information. Which sectors are most scrutinized, and which should be closely monitored? What should companies do to align more closely with stakeholders' expectations ...

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2024-10-07 Donato Masciandaro

European Capital Markets: The Lost Decade and Draghi’s Wake-Up Call

European stock markets are thriving, but this is not necessarily a sign of a broader positive trend. In fact, if politicians and bureaucrats fail to act, the Union could lose the historic opportunity to create the European capital market it so desperately needs, especially in light of the challenges posed by the "Three Ds"—deglobalization, demographics with declining birth rates, and decarbonization. Having discussed this since 2015, we have already lost a decade. Stock exchanges are having a momentous year, with European ones in the front ranks: Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam, with the ...

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2024-09-24 Daniele Dotto

Bringing Innovation to EU Public Administrations

The communication “Enhancing the European Administrative Space,” also known as “ComPAct,”[1] was adopted by the European Commission on October 25, 2023. It is innovative in that, for the first time, the Commission proposes a comprehensive set of actions in support of administrative modernization and cooperation in and between Member States at all levels (national, regional and local). The aim is to learn, improve, and make effective use of European funds, such as those provided by the Cohesion Policy and the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). The ComPAct crowns the natural evolution ...

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2024-09-11 Gianmarco Ottaviano

Marine and Submarine Routes: the Red Sea and the Future of Global Trade

We tend to think of the global market as a seamless large bazaar where goods from all over the world flow with ease. In reality, it consists of countless bazaars of all sizes, connected by a circular flow of goods. The most important connections are maritime, and they are quite few. For this reason, the attacks on ships off the coast of Yemen raise concerns that may seem exaggerated, considering that very few of these have had significant effects. To put things in perspective: since the beginning of the conflict between Israel and Hamas last October, the Houthis, a group of Yemeni rebels backed ...

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2024-09-03 Andrea Beltratti, Alessia Bezzecchi

AI and the Future of Work in Finance

In the 1991 movie Judgment Day, Terminator says, “My CPU is a neural-net processor; a learning computer. The more contact I have with humans, the more I learn.” The effects of the nuclear war started by machines to exterminate humanity in the film have left a profound impact on how many people think about the use of artificial intelligence. For decades, concerns about the growing power of machines were limited to a few, but the exponential increase in the learning capabilities of new systems, particularly those that are part of generative AI, has begun to stir anxiety among academics and managers. ...

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2024-08-18 Francesco Grillo

Internet of Beings. AI and Hyper Data Revolutionize Healthcare

The use of telemedicine dates back to at least as early as the inception of the Internet (Hjelm, 2017). In the same year that Vincent Cerf and Robert Kahn proposed using the Internet Protocol for internal Pentagon communication, astronauts donned spacesuits equipped to continuously monitor their vital signs, sending data back to Houston and streaming it live to a global audience during the Moon landing. But despite decades of optimistic predictions about how digital tools could revolutionize healthcare and disease prevention, these expectations have largely gone unmet. Paradoxically, the healthcare ...

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