Filipe Santos is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Dean of Católica-Lisbon SBE since 2019, holding the Alfredo da Silva Chair in Entrepreneurship and the Chair Girl Move Academy for Social Innovation. He is also a Visiting Professor at INSEAD, where he was a core faculty member for 12 years between 2003 and 2014. At INSEAD, Filipe Santos directed the Centre for Entrepreneurship between 2009 and 2013 and founded and directed the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative from 2007 to 2014. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Management and Strategy. He earned his PhD in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, focusing on Entrepreneurship. He received the Lieberman Award from Stanford University for outstanding contributions to the university, where he served as Chair of the Graduate Student Council, representing the 8,000 graduate students.
Professor Filipe Santos' research has been published in the most prestigious scientific journals in Management and has been cited more than 18,000 times (Google Scholar), appearing on the list of the world's top 2% most impactful researchers since 2020. His research lies at the intersection of strategy, organizational theory, and entrepreneurship, with a primary focus on social entrepreneurship and social innovation. Other research areas include business model innovation, impact investing, corporate entrepreneurship, family business management, and the economic impact of geopolitical transformations. He is the co-author of the "Manual para Transformar o Mundo", the first guide for social entrepreneurs published in Portuguese in 2013 and in English in 2016. As an educator, Professor Filipe Santos has won several teaching excellence awards at INSEAD across executive and MBA programs. He also received the 2012 EFMD award for the best case study in the Africa category with the Nuru Energy case series. At Católica-Lisbon SBE, he teaches courses in social entrepreneurship, impact investing, foundations of management, innovation, and economic geopolitics. He is a regular speaker at national and international events and mentors social entrepreneurs and investors.
As an impact entrepreneur, Professor Filipe Santos co-founded and chaired IES-Social Business School in 2009 and the Social Investment Lab in 2013. In 2015, he founded and served as the first president of the public initiative Portugal Inovação Social (Portugal Social Innovation), which launched an innovative policy to promote and fund social innovation in Portugal, recognized as a best practice by the OECD and the European Commission. In September 2019, he received the Social Innovation Thought Leader Award from the Schwab Foundation, an organization of the World Economic Forum. Professor Filipe Santos served as President of the European Venture Philanthropy Association in 2020 (Impact Europe), was a member of the investment committee of the Social Innovation Fund, and has served on juries for several social innovation initiatives and awards across Europe. He is currently the Presdient of the Board of Trustees of the EDP Foundation, and member of the Advisory Board of the Banco de Portugal and the IGCP – Portuguese Treasury and Debt Management Agency. He aims to contribute to developing an economic system aligned with generating well-being, prosperity, and sustainability.