Chiara Franzoni

Professor, School of Management

Research

Economics of Science and Innovation

Chiara Franzoni is Professor at the School of Management of Polytechnic University of Milan. Her long-term area of specialization is the Economics of Science and Innovation.

She is currently studying Grant Peer Review and the way in which experts take decisions in conditions of uncertainty, such as choosing which research projects to fund. She is particularly interested at the judgment of high-risk high-reward research. Her current work, sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and by the Novo Nordisk Foundation involves a mix of method, including data analysis, lab and field experiments.

In the past, she has studied the incentive system of scientists in academia and the international mobility of scientists.

Selected publications:

Crowd and Citizens Science

New technologies have made it possible for scientists and citizens to interact through the web. This has led to the emergence of Citizens Science, i.e. research projects led or participated by citizens, Crowd Science, i.e. research projects led by scientists whose methods and participation are open to the public and Crowdfunding of Science, i.e. distributed online donations of citizens to specific research projects. Dr. Franzoni is currently working on the preferences of citizens for societal benefits and on their attitude towards fringe sciences. The research is conducted in collaboration with the organizers of the crowdfunding platform www.experiment.com.

Selected publications:

Entrepreneurial Finance

Prof. Franzoni has studied crowdfunding of technological innovation in the early years of its inception. She is currently interested in the response of the crowd to affectively-charged messages and fake news in science.

Selected publications:

Intellectual Property Rights

Patents and Intellectual Property (IP) are important means to enable investments in R&D. Dr. Franzoni has done research at the intersection of IP policy and academic incentives. She and her team are now working on how counterfeiting impacts the performance of innovative companies.

Selected publications:

Teaching

Academic courses at Polytechnic University of Milan

056992 Patents and Intellectual Property Management, M.Sc. Management Engineering (English)
057071 Innovation in Action Lab, M.Sc. Management Engineering (English)
086446/8 Organizzazione di Impresa, B.S. Mechanical Engineering (Italian)

Teaching at the POLIMI Graduate School of Management

Intellectual Property Management, MBA, Executuve-MBA, and Master in Innovation & Entrepreneurship (English, Italian)
Forecasting the adoption of radically new products (English)

Projects

ImPROGRESS. Improving Peer Review within a Science of Science Funding (with Paula Stephan). A project supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation at the NBER. 2021-2024.

ImPRO-RISK. Improving Peer Review of High Risk High Gain science. A project supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. 2022-2027.

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Recently-completed projects:

Risk acceptance in the crowdfunding of science. Sponsored by the Science of Science Funding Initiative of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (with Henry Sauermann). Closed in 2021.

ALTFinator. A project to support Alternative Finance. Sponsored by the European Commission (with Giancarlo Giudici). Closed in 2020.