Antonio Malfense Fierro

Dr Antonio Malfense Fierro completed his PhD at Edinburgh University Business School in 2012 and joined Hull University Business School in May 2013. In May 2010 he was selected as one of the 100 global ‘Young Leaders of Tomorrow’ for the St Gallen Symposium in St Gallen, Switzerland. During 2010-2011 he was the first ‘Chazen Visiting Scholar’ at the Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia University Business School, in the city of New York. He has also more recently (2013) been a visiting researcher at Makerere University Business School in Uganda, investigating large scale successful portfolio entrepreneurs in addition to work with the STEP family business consortium. In 2014 he was invited to the London School of Economics (LSE) Africa summit as an academic advisory panel member.

During his PhD Antonio worked for a year with Edinburgh Universities Student business Incubator. He has also conducted consultancy projects in Southern Africa and has worked at a prominent New York, Venture Capital Fund. Antonio was an accomplished amateur water polo player before injury put an end to his playing career in 2011/2012. He is a qualified water polo coach and represented the Scottish Universities Team (national selection) as a player for three seasons (2006, 2008, 2009), receiving a half blue and colours for this and other achievements, from the Edinburgh University Sports Union. He is a keen golfer, angler and a live sports enthusiast

Dr Malfense Fierro is particularly interested in the role of large scale (or portfolio entrepreneurship) in economic development in Africa and elsewhere. This underlines a broad interest in African business and entrepreneurship which he teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate level. More specifically, he is fascinated by the relationship between risk and entrepreneurship and how risk is managed over time by entrepreneurs in different environments.

Antonio is currently assessing existing measures of ‘entrepreneurial environments’ and their practical applicability and relevance to entrepreneurs and policy-makers. He is also investigating the role of portfolio entrepreneurship in African economic growth and development. Other interests, include the growth processes of entrepreneurial business groups in rapidly, developing and growing markets and other interests in family business and venture capital.

His interests and capabilities also extend to undertaking business opportunity assessments and information gathering that is focused on different industries and markets within African countries, or in environments where the gathering or accessing such information is severely challenging.