He is the founder and president of Entopan – Smart Networks & Strategies, and promoted and coordinated the birth of Harmonic Innovation Group Benefit Holding SPA and the development of the Harmonic Innovation Platform, a network of “places of the future”: generative ecosystems built to ensure support and expertise for the entire innovation cycle (R&D, venture bulding, venture capital, acceleration, open innovation, technology transfer, educational, system integration, etc.) supported by institutional investors capable of overcoming the obsession with market metrics for the benefit of patient investment. The project, which is already at an advanced stage of implementation, will have two large HUBs in Catanzaro and Catania as the Magna-Graecian heart of a vast Italian and international network: this geopolitical location is at the center of the EU-MENA region, the second largest market in the world and the most important in terms of potential sustainable growth in the next two decades.

As part of the same project, he coordinated and promoted the establishment of: Entopan Innovation (the first and only certified incubator/accelerator in Calabria and Sicily accredited with the most important investment funds and centers of expertise globally and manager, together with the Giacomo Brodolini Foundation, of the San Francisco Center for Culture and Innovation, promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Italian Embassy in Washington and the Consulate General in San Francisco under the aegis and impulse of the Presidency of the Republic; Harmonic Innovation Research (the first southern Italian research center of private initiatives surrounding the themes of Society 5.0, which enjoys a stable partnership with the prestigious Bruno Kessler Foundation); OASI – Oltre Advanced School of Innovation, a corporate academy which he co-directs and which offers, in collaboration with Calabrian Universities, a training catalogue of about 100 courses, and a faculty that includes some of the most prestigious personalities from the world of economics, management, research, culture and innovation; Harmonic Housing Living, a center for expertise on the themes of smart & harmonic building, housing and planning.

He has designed and coordinated numerous open innovation and acceleration programs, enabling the emergence of a large and qualified ecosystem, populated by some 700 startups and SMEs that are attentive to combining Tech & Social Innovation.

He is an advisor to major players on innovation issues, and a venture partner of qualified investment funds and venture capital. He is particularly attentive to development economics and its geopolitical and theoretical implications, and is Executive Vice President of the International Institute Colorni-Hirschman, which he co-founded with its president, the economist Luca Meldolesi. This global think tank regularly integrates some of the most important social scientists and economists with a Colornian and Hirschmanian background active on the world stage, and works in collaboration with the most important and prestigious international Institutions and Universities, suggesting analyses, visions, methods and tools to face the great transitions of our era. Cicione inspired the Harmonious Innovation paradigm, which has become widely established in the scientific and operational community, in which he promotes a systemic and integrated approach to the Super Smart Society 5. 0 and to challenges linked with the UN 2030 Agenda, the Green New Deal and the Next Generation EU. Harmonious Innovation seeks to pursue and implement, contaminate and integrate different disciplinary domains in a constant tension that heightens impacts and cultural dividends, and builds value and common good through a generative, cohesive, sustainable and ethically inspired economy. This vision promotes long-term planning, with a view to establishing a new intergenerational pact that attends to the needs for positive change of the planet and people by overcoming short-term interests.

From a Catholic background, he is committed to promoting dialogue between faith and culture, technology and spirituality, including through the Maieutikè festival of which he is the creator and director.

He is editor and curator of the publishing series Harmonic Innovation by Rubettino Editore as well as the Harmonic Innovation Festival.

He is the author, together with Luca De Biase, of Harmonic Innovation – A Sense of the Future (Rubbettino Editore, 2021); together with Luigi Filice and Domenico Marino he published Harmonic Innovation – Super Smart Society 5.0 and Technological Humanism (Springer, 2022). Again for Rubbettino, he edited the reissue of a fundamental text on innovation theory L’invenzione – Come nascono e si sviluppano le idee di Norbert Wiener [Invention: How Norbert Wiener’s Ideas Were Born and Developed] and the volume Quattordici lezioni sull’Innovazione – e il suo intorno [Fourteen Lessons on Innovation–and its Context], a collection of great cultural and scientific importance that collects contributions by Nicola Rotundo, Luca De Biase, Andrea Bonaccorsi, Leonardo Becchetti and Giovanni A. Forte, Pierluigi Basso Fossali, Lorenzo Speranza, Valentino Bobbio, Michele Trimarchi, Ugo Biggeri and Giuseppe Di Francesco, Luigi Filice, Andrea Simoni and Giuliano Muzio, Fabrizio Montanari and Diego Teloni, Fabio Viola, and Antonio Viscomi.