15th Young Academics Workshop 

7 September 2025, 13:30-17:00, Lucerne, Switzerland    

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About CIYA

The young academics workshop is organized by CIYA (Continuous Innovation Young Academics) and is conceived as a way to support the career development of young scholars in the field of continuous innovation by teaching and sharing with them major skills needed in an academic career. 

Target audience

The CINet Young Academics (CIYA) workshop is targeted at young academics such as assistant professors, post-doc researchers and PhD students in the last year of their studies, interested in strengthening their skills to design, program and manage a research program with high impact on multiple dimensions and maximizing the likelihood of being funded by public or private institutions, or companies. 

The challenges

In the first years of their academic life, scholars are often called to change the way their research life is planned and conducted. During their PhD studies, young scholars acquire skills to design and conduct rigorous and relevant research projects. However, when their post-doctoral research career begins, new challenges arise related to:

• Identifying and seizing funding opportunities for supporting their research at local, national, and international level.
• Designing research programs that are rigorous and relevant and that can be funded by public or private institutions, or companies, and at the same time produce a stream of scientific publications in top scientific journals.
• Gaining visibility in the community of business leaders through the outcomes of their research.
• Transferring the outcomes of their research in teaching activities, in all the segments of university education, from bachelor programs to executive education, in a way that is engaging and pragmatic, and produces actionable knowledge for managers and policy makers. 

The 2025 Workshop

At this year's CIYA workshop in Lucerne, we will explore how to manage applied research & externally funded projects to ensure they are scientifically beneficial. to ensure they are scientifically beneficial.

Lucerne, a hub for third-party funding excellence, is the perfect backdrop for this timely discussion at the CINet Conference 2025. This workshop will address the intersection of projects developed in collaboration with external organizations and corporations and scientific advancement, offering insights into making externally funded research impactful beyond its immediate goals.

Our sessions will focus on four main areas:

• Balancing funding objectives with scientific inquiry – Strategies to align project goals with rigorous research outcomes.
• Navigating challenges in collaborative research – Insights into overcoming common hurdles in externally funded projects.
• Ensuring long-term scientific value – Methods to translate project results into enduring academic contributions.
• Direct experience - Sharing challenges, failures, and best practices from projects the faculty managed in the fields of digital innovation, platform thinking, and engagement in innovation.
  

Learn practical approaches to integrate external funding requirements with your research agenda and explore examples of projects that successfully achieved this balance. For example how to design projects that are practical relevant but still possible to publish research outcomes in high-ranked scientific journals.

Our faculty for this workshop includes Magnus Persson, Melanie Wiener, Luca Gastaldi and Daniel Trabucchi. Luca and Daniel, in particular, designed and managed various application research projects on various topics, including digital innovation, platform thinking, and engagement in innovation activities, sharing what they’ve learned (and what they would do differently) from these experiences. The session will be highly interactive with the audience.

Spanning approximately three hours, this workshop will include:

• Case studies on managing externally funded research projects.
• Group activities to develop actionable strategies for your own projects.
• Reflections on maintaining scientific integrity within funding frameworks.
  

Take advantage of this opportunity to connect with peers and experts, gain actionable insights, and ensure your funded projects contribute meaningfully to the scientific community.