Dr Angela Aristidou (second row, third from right) and members of OECD delegation
Associate Professor Angela Aristidou was the sole academic invited to deliver a policy intervention to leaders from 38 nations at the OECD’s Paris headquarters, research that will now inform AI strategies for small businesses worldwide.
UCL School of Management’s Associate Professor Angela Aristidou made a big impact on the international stage this month, when she was invited to present her research to policy leaders representing all 38 OECD member countries at the organisation’s headquarters in Paris.
The two-day convention, held on 13 and 14 April, brought together senior government delegates to deliberate on the future of artificial intelligence policy. Dr Aristidou was the only academic in the room, a distinction that underscores the real-world relevance and policy readiness of her work.
Dr Aristidou’s intervention drew on her research into the mechanisms that can accelerate the real-world adoption of AI technologies by smaller organisations. This is a challenge of significant scale: small and medium-sized enterprises account for almost 80% of the economy, yet they consistently lag behind larger corporations in AI uptake.
Her work identifies concrete mechanisms and practical evidence-based strategies that can help close this gap, making AI adoption more accessible and effective for the businesses that make up the backbone of national economies.
The deliberations were run under the leadership of OECD Deputy Secretary General Frantisek Ruzicka, CFE Director Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, STI Director Jerry Sheehan, CSMEE Chair Angelina Cannizzaro, and Business at OECD Board Member Dr. Patrik Kovacs.
The OECD Digital for SMEs Global Initiative partners included Erwan Bertrand from Amazon, Kakao Corp, Josh Black from Microsoft, Claire Alexandre from PayPal, Rachel Dignam from Sage, Rémi Mulemba from Wolt, and Motohiko Sato from Rakuten.
This is a significant moment for UCL School of Management, demonstrating that the School’s research is not only academically rigorous but publicly relevant and capable of influencing policy at the highest levels of international governance.
