The Science of Mentorship: How Research is Transforming Startup & Corporate Growth
Mentorship 2.0. HEC Paris is proud to announce the recent launch of the ION Management Science Lab, a pioneering academic research lab dedicated to exploring the multifaceted role of mentorship across various sectors. This initiative, backed by a generous 10 million Euro gift from the ION Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Italian entrepreneur Andrea Pignataro, aims to delve into the impact of mentorship within startups, mid-sized firms, large enterprises, universities, and NGOs.
About the ION Management Science Lab
Hosted within the HEC Paris Deep Tech Center, part of the HEC Paris Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute, the lab will investigate the dynamics of mentorship by focusing on how to optimize selection — or even eliminate it when irrelevant, and how to improve matching, interaction methods, and incentives. With the goal of disseminating actionable insights to enhance mentorship effectiveness, the ION Management Science Lab is set to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world applications.
The lab will be under the direction of two HEC Paris professors, both experts in the field of entrepreneurship, Professors Carlos Serrano and Professor Thomas Åstebro. Professor Serrano will serve as the Scientific Director, while Professor Åstebro will be the Executive Director. Their combined expertise and diverse perspectives will be instrumental in steering the lab’s research agenda and ensuring its impact on the broader community.
Why Focusing on Researching Mentorship
92% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies and all Fortune 50 companies run formal mentorship programs.
This number speaks for itself. Mentorship is everywhere and is proven to foster learning and growth at many levels. Yet, although mentorship opportunities are widely available, not everyone can access or participate in them. Carlos Serrano explains:
“Despite its recognized value, mentoring remains limited by the scarcity of qualified mentors and the need for personalized guidance. Hence, the need for more robust frameworks to scale mentorship by bridging these gaps.”
Some of the HEC Paris Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute programs illustrate this: both CDL-Paris and Incubateur HEC Paris admit about 100 companies each year out of more than 500 and 1,000 applications respectively.
Both teachers agree that Artificial Intelligence can expand mentorship by enabling scalability. However, it will also create challenges, such as integrating AI in human decision-making and organizations, requiring frameworks to balance scalability with effectiveness — just as classrooms and curricula balanced reach and quality in education.
Two Complementary Visions Leading To Mentorship Scaling
While both professors share the vision of enhancing mentorship, they approach it with different focuses. Professor Åstebro, drawing from his experience as an entrepreneur and academic, views the lab as an opportunity to address the challenges of talent selection and development in both startups and large corporations. His research focuses on two interconnected challenges in entrepreneurship and talent management: selecting promising ventures or individuals, and accelerating their growth. Åstebro highlights that while technical skills can be effectively assessed through practical tests, evaluating potential in leadership, management, and entrepreneurship remains a "wickedly difficult problem”.
Through the ION Management Science lab, the research aims to improve selection processes or find alternatives to traditional screening methods, both for venture capital investments and corporate talent acquisition. “Our work will explore how to make the selection process better or how to get rid of that selection process altogether,” Professor Åstebro explains before adding:
“we're trying to figure out the best ways to use AI as it is developing, and not be afraid of taking up the challenge. We are also trying to figure out what kind of guard rails we should put on this technology if we put it out so that it's being used for the best purposes to the betterment of mankind.”
While Thomas Åstebro focuses more on selection, Professor Serrano is more involved in the nurturing aspect. He wants to determine the boundaries of when selection is necessary. Another challenge he identified is for entrepreneurs to effectively communicate the problems they face. He points out, “it is humanly impossible that everybody gets advice from another human. It's just not possible in the way we do it”. The lab seeks to scale mentorship to make it more accessible to a broader audience, while balancing scalability and maintaining the effectiveness of mentorship. To do so, Serrano is exploring whether a machine can replicate the ability of experts to understand these challenges. Another challenge is matching individuals with the right mentors, considering different theories on how this should be done.
In short, both agree that the lab will aim to create methods, possibly using AI, to provide mentorship to everyone, reducing the need for selection processes. In other words, rethinking mentorship with data-driven insights for better matching and interaction.
The ION Management Science Lab Focus and Activities
Designed as a research hub with a very specific focus on mentorship’s role in individuals, startups, companies, and non-profits, the ION Management Science Lab's research will focus on three core areas:
- Economic modeling of mentorship: Balancing scalability and effectiveness in mentorship by developing formal frameworks in mentorship economics and AI, with a focus on selection and nurturing. These frameworks will be applied to various actors (individuals, founders, companies) and extended to address challenges like workforce reskilling.
- Data collection, data-driven experimentation and AI tools development to perfect mentorship, the human and AI interaction, and ultimately maximize its impact on actors’ performance.
- Fostering partnerships between academia, industry, and non-profits while disseminating actionable insights.
Interested in taking part in this adventure? The ION Management Science Lad is seeking students interested in joining the Lab as PhD students, as well as current PhD students already in-residence at HEC Paris and elsewhere, that already have funding from their institution, but are interested in joining the Lab, to start in September 2025. For project-related inquiries, you can reach out to astebro@hec.fr or serrano@hec.fr.
Apply here (https://www.hec.edu/en/doctoral-program)
