Antonio C. Malfense Fierro

Competences

Antonio's capabilities extend to the development, design & undertaking of bespoke market research for new technologies and products in the U.K, Europe and Africa; executive education in the areas of business opportunities/challenges (Africa); general entrepreneurship/ business start-up; firm growth and market opportunity assessment/market feasibility studies.

Current Research

In recent years Dr. Malfense Fierro's work has focused on a number of knowledge exchange and applied research projects focusing on SME's and entrepreneurs.

For a recent project please see:

https://www.hull.ac.uk/work-with-us/research/case-studies/supporting-post-covid-19-recovery-in-tanzania

Details of all of these projects can be found on his LinkedIn Profile:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniomalfensefierro/

Antonio is particularly adept at leading and undertaking market feasibility studies for new technologies/products in a a wide variety of industries. For an example pls. see:

https://aura-innovation.co.uk/osl-consulting-engineers/

Research Interests

Dr. Malfense Fierro is particularly interested in the role of large scale (or portfolio entrepreneurship) in economic development in Africa and elsewhere, with his most recent published paper on the topic:

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/JSBED-02-2017-0074?journalCode=jsbed

, being the first journal paper of its specific nature showing the economic contribution of Portfolio Entrepreneurs in Africa.

This research underlines a broad interest in African business, and entrepreneurship which he has taught at both 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.

Background and Achievements

Dr. Antonio C. Malfense Fierro completed his PhD at Edinburgh University Business School in 2012 and has worked at Hull University Business School since 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 Centre at Columbia University Business School, in the city of New York.

He has also been a visiting researcher at Makerere University Business School in Uganda (2013), 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.

Antonio is the programme director for Hull Universities BA Business with entrepreneurship degree and is the business school's lead for knowledge exchange.

In 2017 he was shortlisted and won the University of Hull's Student-led 'inspiring teaching' award from the Hull University Students Union. He has been nominated in multiple categories for these awards in both 2018 and 2019. (in 2020 and 2021 these awards did not run). In 2022 he won Hull University's excellence in the scholarship of learning and teaching in the Inspired in Hull awards 2022.

He was further shortlisted for excellence in teaching at the Hull university employee excellence awards in 2018.

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.