Blockchain is receiving increasing attention from academy and industry, since it is considered a breakthrough technology that could bring huge benefits to many different sectors. In 2017, Gartner positioned blockchain close to the peak of inflated expectations, acknowledging the enthusiasm for this technology that is now largely discussed by media. In this scenario, the risk to adopt it in the wake of enthusiasm, without objectively judging its actual added value is rather high. Insurance is one the sectors that, among others, started to carefully investigate the possibilities of blockchain. For this specific sector, however, the hype cycle shows that the technology is still in the innovation trigger phase, meaning that the spectrum of possible applications has not been fully explored yet. Insurers, as with many other companies not necessarily active only in the financial sector, are currently requested to make a hard decision, that is, whether to adopt blockchain or not, and they will only know if they were right in 3–5 years. The objective of this paper is to support actors involved in this decision process by illustrating what a blockchain is, analyzing its advantages and disadvantages, as well as discussing several use cases taken from the insurance sector, which could easily be extended to other domains.

The role of a relatively small cadre of high-tech startup firms in driving innovation and economic growth has been well known and amply celebrated in recent history. At the same time, it is well recognized that, while the overall contribution of startups is crucial, the high-risk and high-reward strategy followed by these startups leads to significant failure rates and a low ratio of successful startups. So, it is curious to notice that literature tends to focus on successful startups and on quantitative studies looking for determinants of success while neglecting the numerous lessons that can be drawn by examining the stories of startups that failed. This paper aims to fill this gap and to contribute to the literature by providing a repeatable and scalable methodology that can be applied to databases of unstructured post-mortem documents deriving startup failure patterns. A further and related contribution is the analysis carried out with this methodology to a large database of 214 startup post-mortem reports. Descriptive statistics show how the lack of a structured Business Development strategy emerges as a key determinant of startup failure in the majority of cases.

The range of operations of electric vehicles (EVs) is a critical aspect that may affect the user's attitude toward them. For manned EVs, range anxiety is still perceived as a major issue and recent surveys have shown that one-third of potential European users are deterred by this problem when considering the move to an EV. A similar consideration applies to aerial EVs for commercial use, where a careful planning of the flying range is essential not only to guarantee the service but also to avoid the loss of the EVs due to charge depletion during the flight. Therefore, route planning for EVs for different purposes (range estimation, route optimization) and/or application scenarios (terrestrial, aerial EVs) is an essential element to foster the acceptance of EVs as a replacement of traditional vehicles. One essential element to enable such accurate planning is an accurate model of the actual power consumption. While very elaborate models for the electrical motors of EVs do exist, the motor power does not perfectly match the power drawn from the battery because of battery non-idealities. In this paper, we propose a general methodology that allows to predict and/or optimize the operation range of EVs, by allowing different accuracy/complexity tradeoffs for the models describing the route, the vehicle, and the battery, and taking into account the decoupling between motor and battery power. We demonstrate our method on two use cases. The first one is a traditional driving range prediction for a terrestrial EV; the second one concerns an unmanned aerial vehicle, for which the methodology will be used to determine the energy-optimal flying speed for a set of parcel delivery tasks.

Blockchains and sensors installed on a vehicle could be combined to semiautomatically activate/deactivate car insurance coverage in an envisaged on-demand insurance scenario. We present a prototype that includes a mobile application (app) and a portable electronic device to be installed onboard. The mobile app lets the driver dynamically change the status of specific insurance coverage (in some cases, after pictures of the vehicle have been taken to attest to its conditions). Each modification and picture hash (a fixed-length alphanumeric summary of data content) are saved on the blockchain within a smart contract to certify changes made as well as the vehicle's status. Sensors embedded in the electronic device are used to collect passengers' and the vehicle?s data. Data are then used to automatically modify insurance coverage based on car/environment conditions and the preferences set. The proposed solution could help lower policy modification costs and limit insurance fraud.

Schools, universities, and other educational entities are increasingly aware of the untapped potential of digital transformation, an essential process for increasing efficiency and collaboration, and reducing costs and errors in the management of at-scale training systems. In this context, the “Riconnessioni” project was promoted by the Compagnia di San Paolo in agreement with the Ministry of Education but planned, started and developed by the Foundation for the School. The digital transformation started with a defined strategy that leveraged opportunities presented by new technology while meeting the objectives of system stakeholders. Through several steps, that strategy was developed for education connecting everything to support tomorrow’s digital world and creating strong strategic partnerships able to build an ecosystem connecting people, processes, and things into a powerful, secure, and smart communications network. This paper reports on the three-year Riconnessioni project, which is combining the energies of teachers, managers, administrative staff, students, among others, and experimenting with new learning models, taking advantage of opportunities that emerged from perceptions stemming from concerns and systemic issues. To date, more than 150 schools in Italy have been included in the project, together with 550 teachers selected to scale up the instructional process. Using a methodology called “cascade training”, the 550 selected teachers were able to spread the knowledge to more than 2,600 colleagues. The monitoring and evaluation activity performed in Riconnessioni aims at processing information on implementation and results, following three lines. First, it regularly evaluates project activities from a reporting standpoint. Second, it verifies the plan consistency against implementation achievements. Third, it identifies changes produced and focuses on teachers’ and students’ skills to evaluate the effects of the project. The assessment framework is also discussed in this work, reporting on results regarding feedback, follow-up, and effects gathered from the field. The evaluation highlighted that labs were indeed able to improve teachers' competence and underlined the added value of cascade training which spread digital domain knowledge and awareness into the group of involved schools.

Drone-based delivery of goods could become a reality in the near future, as witnessed by the increasing successful experiences in both research and commercial fields. In this paper, a prototype system exploiting a do it yourself quad copter drone for delivering products is proposed. On the one hand, the hardware choices made in order to limit risks arising from autonomous delivery are presented. On the other hand, a framework for orders placement and shipment is shown. The advantages of a system like the one described in this paper are mainly related to an increased delivery speed, especially in urban contexts with traffic, to the possibility to make deliveries in areas usually difficult to be reached, and to the drone's ability to autonomously carry out consignments. A practical use case, in which the proposed system is used for delivering drugs (an application in which the need to quickly receive the good might be particularly important) is shown. Nevertheless, the proposed prototype could be employed in other contexts, such as take-away deliveries, product shipments, registered mail consignments, etc.