Charles AYOUBI

Assistant Professor
department: Management
Campus de Cergy
Career
Biography

Charles Ayoubi is an Assistant Professor at ESSEC Business School whose research explores how organizations generate, evaluate, and diffuse innovative ideas. By combining field experiments (RCT), and observational analyses, he reveals the diverse human and organizational factors that shape innovation processes, emphasizing in particular that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing creativity. His work pays particular attention to the evaluation stage, where decisions about which ideas merit further development can significantly influence an organization’s long-term success. In more recent work, Charles has been examining in particular how generative AI redefines the innovation process within organizations. Prior to joining ESSEC, he was a research fellow at Harvard Business School and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, investigating innovation challenges across scientific institutions, corporations such as Procter and Gamble or Zapier, and governmental agencies like NASA or the SNSF. He holds a PhD in Innovation Economics from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Through his research, Charles aims to offer evidence-based insights to inform organizations and policymakers how to leverage emerging technologies, such as predictive and generative AI, to enhance idea generation, improve evaluation processes, and ultimately drive more effective innovation diffusion.

Diplomas

  • 2020: Doctor of Philosophy, Economics (École polytechnique de Lausanne Switzerland)
  • 2014: Master of Science in Management, Management (ESSEC Business School France)
  • 2014: Master of Engineering, Engineering (École Centrale Paris France)
Career
Full-time academic appointments
    • 2024 – Now : Assistant Professor (ESSEC Business School France)
Other Academic Appointments
    • 2021 – 2024 : Research Fellow (Harvard Business School United States of America)
Distinctions
Research Teaching
Other activities