How do entrepreneurs convince investors of their business ideas, and how do investors in turn determine which ideas to support? Over the past few decades, scholars have been rigorously addressing these questions in different ways but by examining the same phenomenon – pitching.
In a recent publication in the Academy of Management Annals, co-authors Nelson Phillips (UCSB Technology Management), Joep Cornelissen (Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University), and Sai Kalvapalle critically review the large body of work on entrepreneurial pitching. Their review finds a bifurcation of vantage points from which scholars have approached the phenomenon of pitching: that of the entrepreneur, or that of the investor.

Our most recent research video is with Roberto Ragozzino in the scope of his publication Not Like the Rest of Us? How CEO Celebrity Affects Quarterly Earnings Call Language. In it, he explains that the study explores whether celebrity CEOs use certain types of language that affect stakeholders’ perceptions, more than non-celebrity CEOs do during earnings calls. The findings suggest that CEO celebrity can create value for firms, but its effect is more indirect and subtler, as it leads to different language use, which then influences public information disclosure and stakeholders’ perceptions and reactions. The work is authored by Roberto Ragozzino, Tim G. Pollock (University of Tennessee), and Dane P. Blevins (University of Central Florida) and all researchers expect this research and further insights to be useful in raising public awareness about the subject of CEO celebrity and its effects, in terms of leadership and corporate performance.

Nova SBE congratulates the PhD students who successfully defended their thesis:

Marli Fernandes, PhD in Economics

Thesis title: “Essays on the Economics of Inclusion: Immigrants, Gender, and Forgotten Places”

Supervisor: José Tavares

Mattia Fracchia, PhD in Economics

Thesis title: “Essays in Development and Behavioral Economics”

Supervisor: Pedro Vicente

Massimiliano Bondatti, PhD in Finance

Thesis title: “Essays on Commodity and Currency Excess Returns”

Supervisor: Giorgio Ottonello 

Felix Brunner, PhD in Finance

Thesis title: “Connecting the Dots: An Exploration of spillover networks in economics and finance”

Supervisor:  Paulo Rodrigues

The Social Impact Pioneers podcast is out with Jenny Hoobler. This episode explored the essential yet often undervalued world of domestic work. From cleaning to caregiving, these roles are pivotal in today’s society, with the International Labour Organization citing 75.6 million people globally engaged in this sector.

Nova SBE will host the 20^th Symposium on Statistical Challenges in Electronic Commerce Research, which will take place from June 19 to 21. Michail Batikas, Rodrigo Belo and Michael Kummer are among the organizing team. This is a leading conference attracting many top researchers worldwide in information systems, quantitative marketing, economics, statistics, machine learning, and computer science. It covers diverse domains such as e-commerce, social media, digital content, finance, and telecommunications. This year's theme will be “Looking into the next 20 years of Information Systems research”. Check the program here, and register now

Pedro Oliveira was at the launch of the 4th Edition of the Portugal Social Balance Report, which is the result of a partnership between the Nova School of Business and Economics and Fundación ”la Caixa” and Banco BPI. The report was co-authored by Susana Peralta, Bruno Carvalho and Miguel Fonseca. He also spoke about AI as an accelerator of user innovation in the HR Digital 2024, an event organised by APG - Associação Portuguesa de Gestão das Pessoas. He opened the 3rd edition of the 'Growth Forum', a Câmara de Comércio e Indústria Portuguesa (CCIP) event.

Carolina Santos, a Postdoctoral Researcher at Nova SBE Health Economics & Management Knowledge Center, was a keynote speaker at the CMVM Annual Conference. She presented the demographic panorama in Portugal. She was also in the 23rd European Health Economics Workshop (EHEW), co-organized by TBS Education and Toulouse School of Economics. She presented her paper on “Multimarket Competition and Pharmaceutical Firms’ Exit Decisions.” Her research examined how multimarket contacts (MMC) influence market participation decisions in the Portuguese off-patent drug market.

Miguel Ferreira participated in a Fintech Solutions event at The Fintech House to explore strategies for transitioning savers into investors, with a particular focus on younger demographics and digital channels. He discussed how to increase savings and promote financial market participation. And how financial education like the Finanças para Todos program can play a key role.

Cátia Batista was one of the presents on the Migration in Low-income Countries panel of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research conference “The World at Crossroads – securing the future generations”. She participated in a Eutopos conference to speak about the importance of investing in financial inclusion policies, side by side with financial literacy, as tools to promote lives with less hunger, more education, health and entrepreneurship. She also closed the Jornal de Negócios conference with the theme “Brain drain and talent capture”.

Rodrigo Tavares was a part of the júri at the National Sustainability Award, promoted by Jornal de Negócios (Sustainable Finance category).

Ricardo Zózimo participated in the Encontro Fidelidade Comunidade under the theme "Social Organization in 2050: Designing Futures and Possibilities". He anticipated a scenario - which he called "transhumanism" - in which the meaning of being human had already changed due to the fusion between machine and man.

Irem Demirci and Sofia Vala, Executive Director for Faculty and Research, co-hosted the 2024 EFMD Doctoral Programmes Conference: Cultivating Human-Centered Doctoral Research in the Digital Age. The event encompassed all the different facets of doctoral education around the world. Created specifically for business school professionals in charge of doctoral programs and research, it addresses the challenges within different types of doctoral programs.

Susana Peralta participated in the first of the debates, which precede the Estoril Conferences - which this year take place on the 24th and 25th of October at the SBE campus - and which reflected on vital issues for the future: the European Elections and Health Services in Portugal. She was also at Encontros Fora da Caixa to talk about the path to an inclusive European economy.

NOVA SBE Data Science Knowledge Center, Hochschule Harz, Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus, and Vilnius University were together in both Kaunas and Vilnius for an inspiring two-day EPSILON - European Platform for Data Science: Incubation, Learning, Operations, and Network - meeting to review the progress, discussed project outcomes, and strategized for the next phase.