The Dean who wants to impact the world
Passionate about education and knowledge, Filipe Santos is an academic and social innovator who aims to create value and impact the world.
He holds a degree in Economics, a Masters in Management, and a Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering, with a focus on Entrepreneurship, from Stanford University, from which he received the Lieberman Award for outstanding contributions, including serving as Chair of the Graduate Student Council. He was a Professor at INSEAD for over a decade, where he led the Entrepreneurship Center and launched the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative.
At Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics, he is a professor in the areas of Social Innovation, Impact Investing and Corporate Entrepreneurship. His research focuses on the areas of strategy, organizational theory, entrepreneurship, with a focus on the emerging sector of social innovation, impact investing and business model innovation. An academic repertoire that already has 11,000 citations on Google Scholar. He is also the holder of the Amélia de Mello Foundation Chair and the Chair Girl Move Academy for Social Innovation.
Throughout his life, the Dean of CATÓLICA-LISBON sought to contribute to the development of an economic system aligned with the generation of well-being and prosperity, based on the entrepreneurial energy of citizens who seek purpose and social impact. His contributions to society are already recognized by many. Between 2015 and 2016, as a public official, he designed and launched the public policy on Social Innovation in Portugal, now recognized as a best practice by the European Commission. In 2019, he was awarded the World Prize for Social Innovation by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. In the same year, he was the only Portuguese, in the world, present in the list of High Impact Researchers by Clarivate Analytics, in the area of Economics and Management. In 2020, he won the Research Award of the Decade, by the Academy of Management Review, the world's most prestigious scientific journal in management theory, for his article "When Worlds Collide: The Internal Dynamics of Organizational Responses to Conflicting Institutional Demands".
To get to know him better, we interviewed him.
Who is Filipe Santos? How do you describe yourself?
I describe myself as an academic and social entrepreneur who wants to change the world. I believe that the search, codification and sharing of knowledge is the basis for the prosperity of our societies. Thus, I chose to pursue my academic career in the area of management and innovation. I also believe that we need to act as entrepreneurs by building and scaling new projects if we want to have an impact on society. Hence, the focus of my work on social innovation and all the projects I have launched to develop an ecosystem of support for social entrepreneurs in Portugal and Europe.
In December 2016, and after more than 10 years at INSEAD where you launched the area of Social Entrepreneurship, you returned to Portugal and resumed your academic career at CATÓLICA-LISBON, as Full Professor holding the Chair in Social Entrepreneurship, where, not long after, you were invited to join the Management Team of the School. What mostly attracted you in this project?
CATÓLICA-LISBON is a fantastic school with world-class Faculty and a staff with a level of dedication and commitment that I have not found in any other organization I have ever worked with. It is already one of the best business schools in Europe, a national pioneer in several areas, from the launch of the degree in management, to the focus on international accreditation processes, to the internationalization of Faculty and students. I think we can go even further in terms of the impact we want to have on our students, corporate partners and society.
In January 2019, you were invited to assume the position of Dean of CATÓLICA-LISBON. Your mandate was renewed in January 2021. How did you face this challenge?
With great humility and enthusiasm. Humility, because leading a School is above all to serve an academic community and fulfill an institutional project, with ethics and daring. Enthusiasm, for CATÓLICA-LISBON has an enormous potential for development and has a mission to fulfill - to generate impact on students and society through research and education with rigor, relevance and excellence.
Do you consider that your experience linked to social entrepreneurship is an added value to lead the destinies of a School like CATÓLICA-LISBON?
Yes, in the sense that social entrepreneurs excel at anticipating the challenges of the future and designing innovative solutions to these challenges. These solutions involve multiple partners and require a collective effort.
Leading a School of excellence such as CATÓLICA-LISBON compels us to think about the challenges of our society in the areas of Business & Economics, and how the CATÓLICA-LISBON community can respond to them.
What do you think are the main strengths of CATÓLICA-LISBON?
The world-class Faculty in research and teaching. The dedication and competence of our staff. The largest, most influential and most successful Alumni network in management in Portugal.
And what do you think are the main challenges you have to face?
We already have the necessary knowledge infrastructure for the future, but we are growing beyond our physical infrastructure. We need, in articulation with the Rectory of Universidade Católica Portuguesa, to mobilize a strong set of partners for the construction of the university's Campus Veritati expansion. I believe that this will be a mobilizing project for the entire University and for the Portuguese society.
You were invited to take the lead of a School that is considered consistently by the Financial Times, one of the top Business Schools in Europe. What are the main goals you intend to achieve in order to further improve the School's position in this prestigious ranking?
For me the rankings are an instrument for success and not the ultimate goal. We will do what is necessary to have an academic project of excellence and impact. The rankings will reflect our success in constantly creating value for our students and our business and institutional partners. Our reference market will increasingly be the European market in everything we do. And we will also focus on international partnerships outside Europe.
I believe that Portugal has the the opportunity to position itself as a leading country in management education and research. CATÓLICA-LISBON will be at the forefront of this positioning.
The world is becoming more demanding and competitive. What should be the main characteristics and skills that managers must have to be true leaders?
I believe that leading is serving others. With the exercise of authority comes enormous responsibility. A leader must delegate the easy decisions and take on the difficult choices, always with respect for others and transparency in processes. You must create an organization and add a collective strategy with which everyone identifies. Design an organizational model where people are autonomous and not dependent on the leader. For me the hallmark of a leader is to strengthen his organization in capacity and autonomy, to the point where his exit does not make a difference.
What advice would you like to leave to the current students of the School?
Your generation is the most informed, connected, and responsible ever. It is your responsibility to lead the destinies of our society. Do not be conformists, but bold and enterprising. Do not focus on what you can get for yourself, but what you can create for everyone. Your professional success and personal fulfillment will depend on your commitment to create value in everything you do, in your family, community, business, country and planet.
How would you like to be known as Dean of CATÓLICA-LISBON?
As the Dean who united the entire CATÓLICA-LISBON community around an ambitious and aggregating project, strengthening the School and its impact on students and society.
I would like to help build a school that, through the world-class knowledge it generates, the rigorous and inspiring teaching it provides, and the mobilizing projects it develops, becomes a reference in the improvement of society, the progress of citizens, and the vitality companies as engines of value creation.
The man behind the Dean
"I am passionate about entrepreneurship, but I have come to realize that market capitalism will only bring prosperity if we create, combined with the growing movement of commercial entrepreneurship, a strong movement of citizens to undertake and innovate, with the aim of improving society," explains Filipe Santos.
His success is due in part to his ability to "perceive the key ideas most relevant to practice and to organize and convey them in an inspiring way," he says. As a teacher, what motivates him is "to inspire students to being agents of change." "I have always been passionate about knowledge, I love creating models and tools that systematize it and are useful to practice." It was this trait that led to the publication of the first guide in Portuguese for social entrepreneurs, the "Manual to Transform the World", developed by IES in partnership with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
He was born and grew up in Cascais, the "dreamland", as he says, being an inveterate beach lover. He is passionate about his two teenage children – a boy and a girl. In sports he loves volleyball and is passionate about table tennis, which he practices regularly and which gives shape to one of the dreams yet to be realized: to be a professional player. The other dream, we almost guess: "Contribute in a important way to build a strong and united Europe."
Movie of a lifetime
"The Lord of the Rings," the story of the eternal struggle between good and evil in which the true heroes are the smallest and most humble beings - the hobbits.
Milestones
- Arriving at Stanford University in 14 September 1998 to start my PhD and a new chapter in my life.
- My children’s birth in 2006 and 2008;
- The "somewhat radical" decision in 2007 of re-focusing my academic career on the emerging area of Social Entrepreneurship;
- Meet Pope Francis in 2014;
- Launching a new public policy with Portugal Social Innovation in 2015.