AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards: double recognition for our school thanks to Gaetano Lapenta and Innova Europe 2023

On 19 January, the AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards were presented in London, celebrating excellence among business schools and evaluating the projects and achievements of students, alumni and the business world. 

The two awards were, respectively, the Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2024, presented to our alumnus Gaetano Lapenta, cofounder of Fybra, while the Innova Europe 2023 challenge was "highly commended" in the category Best CSR and Sustainability Initiative 2024. 

Both results are an expression of the commitment and desire to be changemakers and have a positive impact on communities as students, managers and entrepreneurs. 

In detail, Gaetano Lapenta is one of the founders of FybRA, the company set up during his Executive MBA at our business school to try to solve one of the most important problems of enclosed spaces and, in particular, of school classrooms: poor air quality. These were the years of the pandemic with all the illnesses and respiratory disorders that entailed prolonged periods being spent in indoor environments. Their 100% Italian device signals when it is necessary to ventilate an environment through advanced sensors and predictive algorithms so as to guarantee health and comfort, but also energy efficiency. 

The Innova Europe project, on the other hand, is a challenge created together with EDHEC Business School and ESMT Berlin with the support of Microsoft Italia, open to students and alumni, inviting participants to develop ideas and solutions capable of addressing some of the challenges relating to the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals set out by the United Nations. Ideas and solutions that can then be put into practice because, in addition to a sum of money, on offer is, above all, support within the academic incubators of the three main business schools in Europe to promote entrepreneurship. 

"We are extremely proud of the two awards we have received within the AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards – commented Federico Frattini, Dean of POLIMI GSoM – in fact, both initiatives have a common denominator, they are guided by the purpose of contributing, through training, to building a better future. Gaetano Lapenta is a visionary entrepreneur,capable of finding simple solutions to complex problems. Whereas the Innova Europe challenge is a catalyst and an accelerator of entrepreneurial ideas that I am sure will have a significant impact on society, through technology".