Jacopo Manotti is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at ESCP Business School, based at the Turin campus. His work broadly investigates how firms, both new ventures and incumbents, design or adapt their business models when entering nascent industries, contexts characterized by high uncertainty and an unformed industry structure. Current work analyzes how new ventures engage customers during the entrepreneurial process, how traditional incumbents reorganize to enter nascent industries, and how entrepreneurial support organizations foster their development.
His empirical focus is mainly on the New Space Economy, defined as the progressive commercialization of space activities following the entry of private actors, after decades of public-led, science-driven programs. Jacopo gained extensive firsthand experience in the industry as the founding researcher of the Space Economy Observatory at Politecnico di Milano's School of Management (2020), a permanent initiative that works with firms to understand the impact of New Space on their businesses. Jacopo is a member of the Advisory Council at the Oxford Space Initiative (OxSI), Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, where he spent a visiting period during his PhD in 2022.
Prior to joining ESCP, he was affiliated with the Politecnico di Milano School of Management, first as a PhD candidate and then as a postdoctoral researcher. He earned his PhD with a thesis titled "Strategizing in Nascent Industries: Business Model Dynamics in the European New Space Economy" and later joined the teaching faculty, where he regularly taught the Entrepreneurship Lab course (MSc, second year), as well as strategy and entrepreneurship modules in MBA, EMBA, corporate, and Specializing Masters programs.
Beyond research and teaching, Jacopo has conducted consulting projects with industry, particularly in startup scouting for the innovation departments of large corporates, served as a coach and jury member in corporate entrepreneurship and incubation initiatives, and spoken at several practitioner-oriented events.
