Simona Botti, academia as a creative enterprise
She studies the potential negative effects of making independent choices in different areas, including medicine, and knowledge as a personal tool people use to control their lives: "For example, today genetic testing allows us to know in advance which pathologies an individual will have to face. I analyze the impact that this kind of knowledge may have on individual happiness". Speaking is Simona Botti, Associate Professor of Marketing at the London Business School.
The topic of choices isn't just limited to her studies, but it's also related to her personal life. "I wanted to be an actress, but my father didn't agree with my idea, so he urged me to enroll at Bocconi. And so, without even knowing it, I began to follow on the path that would eventually lead me to my professional career. After graduating I received an offer from IBM, but I decided to stay at Bocconi to work as an assistant, because it seemed like a more creative experience. That was the moment when I started to understand that academia could be my life path". For her PhD, she was able to enter the University of Chicago: "In the United States I was propelled into a very challenging reality, with top-level scholars, so I put my nose to the grindstone and harnessed all the determination I'd learned previously". After completing her PhD she received a position at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, and then she received the London offer in 2007. Today, Simona Botti conducts experimental research; technological innovations help her carry out her studies in a simple way that's economically advantageous, thanks to online platforms such as MTurk, which can substitute data gathering in the lab. "For us researchers, the great revolution of the digital era is the immediacy with which we can gather data, and the possibility to spread our work through the network: this shouldn't, however, make research more commercial and therefore less interesting from a purely academic standpoint".
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