“My class prepares students to make a real difference in the world”
Davide Bavato was recently named the best teacher in EPFL’s management of technology and entrepreneurship section - 2025 EPFL/Alain Herzog - CC-BY-SA 4.0
Davide Bavato had long been torn between the academic world and his love of entrepreneurship – then he found a way to combine the best of both. Bavato was recently named the best teacher in EPFL’s management of technology and entrepreneurship section.
After working full-time for a startup, Davide Bavato decided to build on that experience by doing a master’s degree and then a PhD in entrepreneurship. While this could suggest he’s a born businessman, as a child, his calling seemed to be in the other direction. “I was a real bookworm growing up,” he says. “I seemed destined more for a career in research than one as a specialist in business creation!”
Bavato developed a taste for entrepreneurship during his bachelor’s degree at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. “I loved the energy that startups have and the fact that they can really help change society and make the world a better place,” he says.
Learning from your mistakes
Shortly after graduating, Bavato took a job with a local startup. “I worked for Desall, which runs an online platform that connects companies with designers by holding design contests,” he says. This initial career experience helped “shape the research I did later.” And most importantly, the hands-on experience gave him an opportunity to learn from his mistakes – it’s no secret that starting a new business, even if you have the best mentors, “is all about trying and failing and trying again.”
All that kindled Bavato’s intellectual curiosity. “I was ready for a new challenge and wanted to gain international experience,” he says. He left his hometown of Piombino Dese, near Padua, Italy, and moved to Sweden where he obtained a joint master’s degree in international management from CEMS (a global alliance of business schools, multinationals and NGOs) and the Stockholm School of Economics. This was followed by a PhD from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, with a thesis on the recognition of novelty and new ideas.
At the intersection of two worlds
In the end, Bavato found there’s no real reason to have to choose between research and practice. “My approach to teaching is a great way to combine both!” says Bavato, who’s currently a postdoc under EPFL’s Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization. “For instance, my Introduction to Entrepreneurship class shows students how to take the first steps in creating a business while using scientific reasoning as a guide.” His class combines lectures on entrepreneurship theory with a group project where teams of students develop a business plan. “Around 50 students usually take my class, and they’re all really motivated,” says Bavato. That’s probably also because “I don’t have them simply go through the motions by working on exercises that will end up in a drawer collecting dust.” When these students graduate from EPFL, “they’re equipped to go out into the world and make a real difference.”
Bavato joined EPFL in February 2020, just as the pandemic put Switzerland into lockdown. He says this timing had a major influence on the way he teaches. “I believe that the success of a class depends heavily on the teacher – their physical presence, how well they’re able to connect with students and encourage them to bond with each other, and whether the teacher is available to help students individually.” In response to the challenge of holding classes online, Bavato made his lectures “as interactive as possible and tried to include a lot of informal discussion, such as by holding virtual social gatherings.”
Nurturing an entrepreneurial spirit
Bavato kept essentially the same approach after the pandemic. He prioritizes interactive lectures and informal discussions, with the goal of convincing every student in the room that they are “perfectly capable of starting a business.” That entails “convincing students they’ll make it through the next step, and explaining how to move from theory – what’s in the slide deck – to practice – acquiring customers,” says Bavato. “I also encourage them to get in touch with people who have created successful companies and established a lasting business model.”
“I firmly believe there are many ways of becoming an entrepreneur,” says Bavato. For starters, you don’t necessarily need to be the boss. “You can nurture your entrepreneurial spirit as an employee within an organization.”
With his iconoclastic approach, Bavato sees his class as “a breath of fresh air” in students’ degree programs. “When you attend an institute of technology, it’s easy to think there are only two career paths available: research or industry.” Bavato wants to “break students free from this kind of tunnel thinking and get them to follow another path – one they forge for themselves.”