My first six months (and a new column!)

Welcome to the second post of my blog!

This time I will start by resuming the main highlights of this first semester, before telling you more about my plans for the future. Finally, I will present a brand new column where I intend to share some curious content that caught my attention while surfing the internet.

What have I done?

As I am now 6 months into my PhD, I think I have already had a taste of what a doctorate is all about. I have attended several interesting courses and seminars, submitted my first papers, worked long hours and made calls at unusual times (the West Coast time zone did not help), but I have also had a lot of flexibility and, most importantly, I have started to give my small contribution to share knowledge on the topics that interest me most.

First, I had the chance to give two lectures in a MSc course called “Sustainability in a Business Development Perspective” about “Social entrepreneurship in a digital context” and “The Impact of Sustainability on Today’s Management”, at Aarhus University.
Even though I was very lucky because I could teach two topics of my interest, I have to admit that at the beginning it felt a bit weird to be on the other side of the desk, as you have almost the same age of the students in front of you. But when you have the opportunity to share your experience and knowledge about something you are passionate about, then everything becomes easier and more natural. Moreover, I think this opportunity also helped me in strengthening old relationships and building new ones. First, because I got in contact with some former colleagues of mine at PwC Italy. They helped me to invite a Manager, who gave us an overview on the last developments around Non-financial reporting matters. Secondly, because this topic sparked a discussion with some working students that went beyond the four walls of the classroom and had positive implications on their job.

Photo taken by myself, during the “The Impact of Sustainability on Today’s Management” class, Aarhus University

Then, I also virtually participated in my first conference, at NEST. Even though I could not join it in person, it was a nice opportunity to receive feedbacks from other early stage scholars, to get to know their research and see how the topics that I am going to write about are addressed in a rather different yet connected field, i.e. Sustainability Transition.

Cover of the PPT presented at the 7th NEST Conference

What will I do?

In this period, I have also received the first responses related to the works I submitted in the previous months. They have all gone well, which means that I will be able to travel a lot in the next few weeks! In June, I will be first in Copenaghen and then in Zurich, respectively to attend ISPIM and EURAM. In these two conferences, I will present my research-in-progress on Innovation Ecosystems and Technology Social Ventures, two of the topics that I want to deepen during my PhD and that I will talk about more in the next blogs. Then, after a couple of weeks I will be flying to Barcelona for the first EINST4INE Summer School – if you are interested, morning sessions will be open (online) to external participants. In that occasion, together with other 3 ESRs, I will run our first Industry engagement activity, i.e., a contest in which the ESRs will have to find a solution for the challenges proposed by the companies part of the consortium. A great chance to put in practice our knowledge and understand the main interests of the industry partners.

Finally, after the Summer Break, I will take part to the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, in Seattle. This year’s theme is “Creating a Better World Together” and I will be involved in the organization of the Paper Development Workshop on “Researching Open Innovation”. Being the most important conference in the field, I cannot hide that I am really excited. It will be a great learning opportunity to personally meet the most talented scholars from all over the world and to better understand how the academic world works overseas. Moreover, it will be the first live event after the pandemic, so I guess that everyone will be very excited.

All this travelling will mean that my writing will be temporarily put on hold, but I hope that these weeks will represent a great source of inspiration for the work that I will do in the upcoming months. Therefore, the main goal will be to get to know new people that work on similar topics and put some gas in the tank in terms of ideas and useful academic references. Looking forward, this could also be a great opportunity to build relationships that could potentially evolve into future collaborations.

Surfin’ Internet

Since the main goal of a PhD is to research, ask new questions (and sometimes give answers), this column aims to collect material that I have found useful or that has piqued my curiosity in recent times.

• Video:
  • The quality of the material shared by the New Scholars Network is absolutely stunning. You can attend webinars hosting the most renowned scholars, interact with them, and even watch most of the recordings whenever you want on their YouTube channel. In addition, it is also a great way to stay up-to-date on the latest articles published in the field of management.

     

• Academic article
  • In his latest article, J. Kirchherr, researcher at Utrecht University and Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, writes about the “​Bullshit in the Sustainability and Transitions Literature: a Provocation​”.
    Beside the rant being addressed at one specific topic, it is a good reminder for all researchers writing on a trending topic, regardless of their academic field. That said, there is no doubt that sustainability has become a buzzword and we should all be careful how we use it, unless our goal is to devalue it.
•  Tweet
  • In this thread, G. Krlev describes his (almost) endless journey in search of a tenure track position.
    It sounds a bit scary, but I think it offers a nice overview over the idiosyncrasies of the academic world and some food for thought about the lessons learnt during this process.

    Been on job market for +3 years (ThReE!), and now have a tenure-track Assistant Professor position! Job market is cruel.

    Best advice & lessons🧵–not perseverance pays.

    "To be considered seriously for a prof position, in next 2-3 years you need to publish about 20…

    — Gorgi Krlev (@gorgikrlev) May 9, 2022

I would be curious to know your perspective, so, feel free to comment the post.

That’s all for today, see you soon!