Welcome to my personal website!

I am a currently an Assistant Professor at ESSEC Business School since September 2024. Before that I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Business School and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH).

My research focuses on understanding the complete innovation process—from initial ideation through evaluation and funding to ultimate diffusion. I study how individual characteristics, expertise, and backgrounds shape each critical stage of innovation, particularly the evaluation process which serves as a pivotal bridge between idea generation and successful implementation. My work spans several key areas of innovation research: I investigate how generative AI is transforming collaborative work and expertise sharing in organizations, examining both performance impacts and changes in team dynamics. I also study innovation evaluation processes, exploring how human-AI collaboration can enhance early-stage assessments and how evaluator characteristics influence technological solution appraisals. 

I employ a variety of methodologies in my research, including field experiments, applied econometrics analysis, and economic modeling, to systematically investigate the underlying processes and incentive structures that govern innovation production and diffusion. My studies span diverse organizations—from universities and corporations to tech firms, scientific funding agencies, and national research institutions like NASA—providing insights into how organizations can more effectively manage innovation processes and integrate new technologies such as generative AI in the process .
Please see my research page for more information.

My academic journey began in France, where I completed a double degree between Centrale Paris and ESSEC Business School, followed by a master's degree in Maths (Probabilities and Statistics) at Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) and a master's degree in Economics at Université Paris Sud. After a couple of years of experience in the energy industry and in strategy consulting I went to pursue a Ph.D. in Economics of Innovation at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, before joining LISH as a postdoctoral research fellow. 

Email: charlesayoubi13[at]gmail[dot]com