Once again, students from Prof. Stefano Elia’s “Invest in Foreign Markets“ Lab were among the highest-performing teams in the X-Culture competition, confirming the excellence of the Master’s Degree Programme in Management Engineering.
The competition takes place both face-to-face and remotely over eight weeks. Participants work together in multicultural teams to develop an internationalisation project for the participating companies.
The 2025-1 edition involved 5.832 students from 161 universities in 141 countries and spanning six continents. Participants were divided into 1.121 global virtual teams, each comprising an average of six members from different academic and cultural backgrounds.
During the project, each team developed a strategic internationalisation plan for a real company, culminating in the presentation of a final report. A total of 1.002 reports were submitted to the jury.
A commission of 180 international experts — comprising university professors and business coaches from 41 countries — was tasked with evaluating the projects. Each report was analysed independently by the commission according to criteria such as creativity, clarity of presentation, feasibility of the proposed solutions, stylistic quality, and overall coherence. Each project was examined by between three and seven experts, who also provided qualitative feedback.
At the end of the selection process, the 18 teams that performed best were identified, with one team selected for each participating client company. These teams included three groups of students from the “Invest in Foreign Markets” Lab, which was coordinated by Prof. Stefano Elia, who teaches on the Master’s Degree Course in Management Engineering.
The academic tutors, Ludovico Benetel and Alessio Di Marco, who are both former students of the Master’s Degree Course in Management Engineering, as well as Virginia Vassallo and Jeanne D’Arc, made a decisive contribution by supporting the teams with competence and dedication throughout the competition.
In recognition of the high quality of education provided and the excellent results achieved, the academic team received the prestigious 2025-1 X-Culture Global Educator Award, joining the top 50 professors worldwide.
This is a highly prestigious result that testifies to the solidity of the educational pathway and the high level of internationalisation of the Master’s Degree Course in Management Engineering.
Further details on the initiative can be found here: