Joint Seminar INCHER and IVWL: “Exploration in research teams: Building on the shoulders of PhD students” by Associate Professor Dr. Michele Pezzoni
Michele Pezzoni received his Ph.D. in Economics and Technology Management from the University of Bergamo (Italy). Currently, he is Associate Professor at the Université Côte d’Azur and Scientific Advisor at Observatoire des Sciences et Techniques, HCERES (France). He was a postdoctoral fellow at EPFL (Switzerland), Bicocca University (Italy), and University of Brescia (Italy). His main research interests concern the economics of science and innovation.
During his visit at INCHER from April 20 - 24th he will give a presentation on a recent working paper:
Raffaele Miniaci & Michele Pezzoni & Sotaro Shibayama, 2025. “Exploration in Research Teams: Building on the Shoulders of PhD Students,” GREDEG Working Papers 2025-49, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
Authors Abstract:
Exploration is a critical input for creativity and innovation. This paper aims to investigate how the innovator and her team's exploration activities boost the innovator's performance. In our empirical context, the innovator is a French professor at the university, and her team consists of her PhD students. We study 14,978 research teams, led by an equivalent number of supervisors. Supervisors and students can explore by investigating research subjects that the supervisor has not previously investigated. Moreover, the direction of their exploration can be more or less aligned. We measure exploration by assessing the similarity of students' and supervisors' research documents using text analysis. Our regression analyses find that both supervisors' and students' exploration activities play a role in determining the supervisors' performance, as measured by publication quantity, impact, and novelty. We show that an optimal combination of exploration activities and alignment yields considerably higher supervisor performance compared to the average. Our results support the idea that PhD students' exploration activities are of paramount importance to their supervisors' performance, and that supervisors should pay close attention when assigning students' thesis subjects.
Venue: Campus Center, Seminar Room 6, Moritzstr. 18