Patrick Smith, PhD, Research Lead and Programme Coordinator

Patrick Smith, PhD, is Sidestream's Research Lead and Programme Coordinator, based in Madrid. He designs our immersive workshops from the research evidence and builds the simulation-style case studies that participants work through, in the room and online. He joined Sidestream in 2026, the year he completed his doctorate at Bocconi University, where his dissertation examined the socio-cognitive drivers of strategic decision making in new ventures and privately held enterprises. That is a useful place to have started for someone whose job is now to decide what people should rehearse, and why. See how we think about behaviour change.

From the Data to the Rehearsal Room

Before Bocconi, Patrick spent four years in consulting. At IBM in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he worked with executive stakeholders at Fortune 10 companies on putting Watson, IBM's AI technology, to practical use: identifying use cases with client teams, translating a new capability into something a business team could run, and presenting progress to executive management every week. As a litigation consultant at Compton and Wendler in Houston he produced expert witness reports from accounting data and witness testimony, calculated lost-profit damages in contract disputes and valued closely held businesses. In between, he founded Job Loop, an app connecting students with local part-time jobs, and managed its development and sales himself.

That mix matters for what he does at Sidestream. Designing an immersive programme means deciding what the evidence says people should rehearse, writing a case that is specific enough to feel real, and knowing how to read what comes out of it. Patrick brings the data habits for all three: large-scale analysis in Python and Stata, financial and predictive modelling, and the discipline of translating technical findings for people who are not technical.

Teaching Strategy, Then Rehearsing It

Patrick taught at Bocconi from 2023 to 2026 as instructor of record for four undergraduate and graduate courses across nine semesters, with classes of 60 to 140 students, designing the syllabus, delivering the lectures and setting the exams. He now teaches Strategy of Innovation at IE University in Madrid. Teaching strategy to a lecture hall and rehearsing it with a leadership team are different jobs, and he has done the first long enough to know what the second has to add. Some things cannot be taught, they have to be felt.

What Patrick Leads at Sidestream

As Research Lead, Patrick keeps our workshop design anchored in existing research rather than in training folklore: the behavioural targets we choose and the scenario mechanics we build around them. As Programme Coordinator, he creates the simulation-style case studies for in-person and virtual delivery and coordinates the work that turns a brief into a programme. He works with co-founders Ben Laumann and Sebastian Flack, so the research evidence sits inside each programme from the first draft rather than being added at the end.

If you want to see how that evidence shows up in a programme, start with our approach or how we work with companies.