Edition #6 - June, 2012

Nova’s Football team falls proudly in the semi-finals of the Nationals after a remarkable effort

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Read about the formal presentation of this knowledge center created by Nova, in partnership with the Angola Business School (ABS).

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Professor Pedro Pita Barros writes about the characteristics he most likes and dislikes in Nova Students

Former NOVA student, Mariana Reis shares her experience working for one of the most re-nowned consulting firms in the world P. 16

Interview with Susana Peralta

Currently the Coor-dinator of the Masters in Economics, Profes-sor Peralta, talks us about how she got to Nova, her work life/balance, and the plans for the Masters in Economics

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Students provide testemonials of what it’s like to participate in no-torious business games and how it is a personal and curriculum im-proving experi-ence

Visit our website at: www.novanews.com.ptSend us an e-mail at: novanews@novasbe.pt

NOVA ExCElS iN wORld-widE BuSiNESS GAMES P. 2

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June, 2012June, 20122 3NEWSNEWS

Nova and the world of Business GamesNOVA participates in several Business Games from diverse areas such as Marketing, inno-vation, Energy, Banking and General Management for students to develop soft skills such as initiative, achievement, working under pressure, teamwork and cooperation. it is believed to be a good basis to be successful in the professional environment, being recognized by recruiters that seek differentiated talent.

NOVA succeeds!“Supernova” has been

the name chosen by the Nova SBE students for the winning team of the na-tional final of the l'Oréal Brandstorm 2012 compe-tition on 10 May in lis-bon.

The group, formed by students of three differ-ent nationalities – Polish, Brazilian and Portuguese – will represent Portugal in the international final in Paris, on 14 June where they will be competing with teams from all over the world.

This year, the competi-tion involved the devel-opment of an iconic and innovative product for Body Shop. Two NOVA teams competed with four others, two from Católica and two from iSCTE. “Su-pernova” presented an innovative and creative concept which completely engaged the audience and received an unanimous

"Société Générale's Citi-zen Act 2012 brought students from all over the world (india,Cote d'ivoire, Hong Kong, Russia, etc) together for a game, a competition and workshops on sustain-ability and CSR, corporate social responsibility. This competition, above all, al-lowed us to get to know the bank, meet people from different cultures and dream to build a bet-ter world in Paris - where we learned and presented innovative solutions for

appraisal from the jury of the competition.

According to Professor luísa Agante, who sup-ported the teams’ partici-pation in this competition, throughout the develop-ment of the projects and their presentations “Both teams did a wonderful job in representing NOVA and received great feed-back from the jury. All the students, from both teams were absolutely commit-ted to this challenge and

worked really hard. i´m glad that the final result turned out positive al-though i regret the fact that there is only one win-ner.” Supernova

Tomasz Pierog Clara Nobre Rita Belo

Triple Impact Filipa david inês Violante Ana Santos

L’Oréal Brandstrom

sustainable cities.The experience was surely rewarding! Our team did all the work at a distance and we are proud to have achieved 5th place out of more than 500 participat-ing teams. At the finals, in second time we met in Paris, we presented a proj-ect to make a city of our choice, lisbon, more sus-tainable, keeping in mind the role of a bank such as SG and its CSR commit-ment. Our proposition was a financial product to be used in the renovation

and rehabilitation of de-caying abandoned build-ings in the city center. The solution was innovative because of two things: (1) the merging of 3 well known concepts, group lending (i.e. originally in microcredit) + traditional mortgage + loans for sus-tainable technology (i.e. solar panels), and (2) the engagement of a large ar-ray of stakeholders be-cause of the social mission of a few of the renovated apartments, corporate partners, students in-

volved in the project, etc.we are sure NOVA stu-dents have great potential to keep on succeeding in the upcoming seasons of this competition! we worked together from our exchange locations around the world (Can-ada, ireland and Poland) and it worked for us!"

Alicja Pitthan, Mariana Torgal and

Sara Mezghrani.

Société Générale's Citizen Act 2012

NOVA Masters stu-dents' Henrique Queiroz (Masters in international Management /MiM) and Tiago Correia (Masters in Management), formed the winning team of the Sol-vay Business Game which took place in Brussels on 2

and 3 March.The 400 students (200

teams) that participated in this game organized by Solvay Brussels School of Economics & Manage-ment, which is recognized as the leading business game in Europe, have been

Solvay Business Game in Brussels

Teams from Nova in this year’s Brandstorm

June, 2012June, 20124 5NEWS

Which Business Games did you participate in?Peak Time, Global Man-agement Challenge and xTB Trade

How was your score?in Peak Time, i was in the top 20% in the Pre-liminary Phase and in the Global Management Challenge, in the last po-sition in the group phas-es. As for xTB Trade, i do not remember.

What are the positive and negative aspects of participating in a Busi-ness Game?For Peak Time, it is a really interesting game where you are competing with international teams,

which is really positive, but the assessment cri-teria is very ambiguous, specially in those com-ponents were the creativ-ity is valued, which rep-resents a negative point of the game.

Concerning Global Man-agement Challenge, the game is a really complex. You are managing a com-pany but the instructions are a little bit confusing, so the performance was compromised by this.As for the xTB Trade, you learn how the financial market works in a real time. You also have ac-cess to on-line workshops in order to increase your knowledge. As for nega-tive points, you want to

know if the rentability of your assets is increasing or not, so you spend a lot of time going to the platform over and over again.

Do you think it was im-portant for your future career?Yes. Peak Time is a prati-cal game in a real con-text; Global Management Challenge gives an over-all perspective of how the company works, but i did not think that i learnt any important lesson by play-ing this game; and xTB Trade is important if you want to be an investor.

Was it important for net-working? in Peak Time, it is not im-

The Novafrica Center for Business and Eco-

nomic development is a partnership of both NO-VASBE and ABS (Angola Business School) that aims at producing notable re-search that can be imple-mented on the field and to promote sustainable de-velopment on Portuguese speaking African coun-tries. For this mission, the Center relies on highly qualified resident mem-

bers to pro-duce valuable research to de-cision makers in Africa.

Associated with the Center there is also a stu-dent group that aims at helping the Center and the students that want to take the leap to Africa, either alone or through the Cen-ter. if you are interested in working in Africa, then the Student group is avail-

able to help you.On April 18th, Novafri-

ca hosted a conference in this faculty, with the aim of officially introducing the Novafrica Center to the public and debating on what can economics do for development. Prof. Cátia Baptista opened the conference by present-

ing the Center. dean José Machado, prof. Pedro Vi-cente and prof. José Tava-res took it from there pro-viding their insights on African development and development economics, illustrated with examples, and the student group presented their mission, as well as their members. After a heated discussion, the public left with a better perception on how Nova is using the opportunities to expand its influence, in this case in the context of Africa.

if you are interested in the project, visit novafrica.org or send them an email at novafricasg@novasbe.pt.

João Almeida

NovaAfrica conferenceNEWS

portant because we did not have a direct contact with anyone of this chal-lenge; as for the Global Management Challenge, it is important if you want to work with the company that sponsors your team or the game itself. And finally, for the xTB Trade game, it is really important for net-working and even today i have access to on-line, dynamic and free work-shops where you meet some experts.

selected among 9,000 in-ternational candidates.

The game is a two-day real life business simula-tion made up of five chal-lenges - Online, Strategy, Negotiation, Marketing and Eloquence. Students of economics, manage-ment and engineering are exposed to genuine busi-ness challenges that test their abilities and skills and are evaluated by the business partners of the competition, including

multinationals such as unilever, McKinsey and BdO.

"The challenges were truly complex and to reach the final we had to work with other teams from different nationali-ties and backgrounds, un-der an unbelievable time pressure" - says Henrique Queiroz - "they absolutely placed us out of our com-fort zone."

in addition to the in-tense preparation, the

fact that these students are interested people that can think and have strong opinions about matters, coupled with the ability to structure a presenta-tion and work rapidly under pressure, were key to success. "we've shown how good the Portuguese students are and how well trained we are at NOVA" - Tiago Correia concludes.

Each student has re-ceived a trip for two to the McKinsey university, at a

hotel in the Austrian Alps, but both unanimously rec-ognize that "the contacts that we established, as well as the opportunities for internships and careers that were opened, have been without any doubt, the greatest rewards."

Clara Gil, André Agostinho and

Miguel Aguiar

Testemonial from Tânia Sequeira, a Business Game Veteran

in an international context where greater commercial and political relationships are being built with Africa, an organization such as No-vafrica may play a major role. This institution was presented in April 18th at NOVASBE.

June, 2012June, 2012

No professional is in-different to populari-

ty. That might be pure vanity, but it may also re-flect the search for true quality that can occasion-ally be behind popularity and is the seal of a well done job, something that is perhaps quite more no-ble than pure vanity. while in some cases the roots of popularity are definitely despicable (e. g. participate in a reality show or similar), it does not seem to be the case among academics. To par-ticipate in economics’ re-ality shows or to go on TV to comment breaking news is far from being valued in the academia. So why are some economics’ scholars more popular than others? Probably be-cause they are more cited; or probably they are more cited because they are popular... independently of the direction of the cau-sality, citations are in-creasingly becoming a very important indicator to assess the performance of a researcher. As the Yale’s professor dan John-son noticed, “All academ-ics want to be cited.” There are many reasons for this

desire, including the quests for truth, fame or financial rewards. while truth may not be evi-denced by citations, the search for truth is marked by discussion and deliber-

ation, the very items that citations measure best. Fame in academia is syn-onymous with citation (…). Surely is not just about fame in its most su-perfluous sense. it is hard to be a top cited academic if your work is not relevant enough: and if it does not reveal with certainty some scientific truth, at least it has a strong discussion potential. Besides, a cita-tion may be seen in several different ways: from a form of recognition until proxy of human capital, or even as an input for larger scientific production, the virtue of signaling quality

might be the most attrac-tive feature. All these char-acteristics make us admit that to study citations and what is behind them is not of small importance; in-deed, citations have also a positive and significant impact in scholars’ earn-ings, drive career progress and create opportunities outside the academic world, they are strongly linked with knowledge production and dissemi-nation. For sure they are not a perfect indicator as some real caveats may confirm, but citations’ sci-ence is definitively crucial for faculties, departments, journals and govern-ments, and of most policy relevance.

There are many works treating citations as exog-enous, but few aim to dis-cover the determinants of citations, what is behind a cited economist, why are some articles more cited than others. The work Project i did – which is under preparation to be submitted for publishing and promises to gather a lot of citations... - address-es precisely this question. using a very rich Portu-guese data set, carefully

constructed over files provided by Paulo Gui-marães, this work intends to build upon the scarce previous literature using a complete and appropriate econometric treatment.

The general findings suggest on one hand that citations correspond in fact to some specific char-acteristics and are not a kind of “lucky” or vicious mechanism. On the other hand, accurate econo-metric techniques can evidence that unobserved authors’ characteristics do matter; it’s not just about holding top Phds, hav-ing good co-authors and

so on, it’s “in the blood”: there are many personal characteristics we can not

under the Veil of CitationsEveryone aims to be recognized in what they do. in the academia this is no different, but are there pre-made formulas to be a cited academic?

6 7OPINION

last edition i wrote about the great perfor-

mance of Nova’s football team at the lisbon uni-versities’ Championship. i was emotional at that time. well, do not expect me to be less emotional now, as i tell you the story of the CNus (National universi-ties’ Championship).

At the beginning there were twelve teams run-ning for the glory (three of them from lisbon), all with legitimate aspira-tions. Nova was one of them. The competition was divided in a group stage (three teams in each of two groups would qual-ify for the quarter-finals) followed by playoffs. Nova had been once in these championships, but at the time without much luck.

we began the tournament as outsiders, but this time the story was different.

At the group stage, Nova won the two games with a score of 2-0, against in-stituto Superior da Maia and universidade da Beira interior. in both games, Nova was clearly superior, playing the most attrac-tive and effective football, against more reputable teams. The door was open for whatever would hap-pen next, the players be-gan to feel everything was possible.

Along came the quarter-finals. we were playing against the previous na-tional champions, insti-tuto Politécnico do Porto, once again a northern team, but that did not make us any less confident.

At the end, the players cel-ebrated the deserved win, again with a score of 2-0. But there was no time to celebrate, not even to rest. in the same day, Nova had to play the semi-finals. As if written in the stars, Nova had to play against a faculty from Porto for the 3rd time in four games. The opponent was now FAdEuP – Faculdade de desporto da universidade do Porto. Nova exhibited its best football ever, but despite the advantge of 1-0 in the first half, FAdEuP overturned the score with two strange goals. At the end, Nova lost 2-1. it was the end of the dream. The players were desolated. in the following day, without much motivation, Nova lost 4-2 with FMH, finish-

One last time

ing the tournament at 4th place. Nevertheless it was a great accomplishment for a team who had just won the 2nd division in the previous year.

From a more personal approach, it was a memo-rable week in which the friendship between the players deepened even more. For me, it was the end of an era at Nova, as it was my last year com-peting for the team, by i sincerely hope that in the next years Nova can achieve even greater ac-complishments and go farther at the nationals!

A final note to congrat-ulate the National Cham-pions, FAdEuP, and to thank every student, pro-fessors and staff member, who helped us go to the nationals, and made pos-sible to us being present at this unforgettable tour-nament. And most of all, a big thank you to all the players and to our Coach, Gonçalo Pereira.

“it was a hell of a ride”!

Gonçalo Coronha

Nova’s Football team continues to impress, this time at a national level.

OPINION

“Citations are in-creasingly becoming

a very important indicator to assess

the performance of a researcher.”

“There are many works treating cita-tions as exogenous, but few aim to dis-cover the determi-nants of citations,

what is behind a cited economist, why are some articles more cited than others.”

June, 2012June, 20128 9

What is your reaction when people confuse you with a student?

(laughs) i feel flattered! i am so used to it… it used to be worse but i am get-ting older. i like it a lot because it makes me feel younger and because i enjoyed my time as a stu-dent. Sometimes it makes me laugh. it is very flatter-ing and very pleasant.

Tell us a little bit of your story, Academic and personal life.

i graduated from Católi-ca, then i started working for a business consultant, but i was so unhappy there that i quit one month later. i worked for two months but i resigned one month after i started. Basically i wanted to try consultancy but i hated it so much i decided to go back to the academic life and do a Phd. So i went to Belgium. i spent part of my Phd in Belgium and part of it in london and it was a great experience, living abroad all those years, meeting new schools, new people doing very nice things… i also liked very much the relaxed way in which people work in other countries. Our country sometimes is little bit too

formal. when i finished my phd, i really wanted to be in lisbon, so i man-aged to be hired by Nova. And i like it a lot, i think i have the dream job. it is so fun! i love teaching, plus it is so flexible and the research is really fun and you are always learn-ing, with your colleagues, with students… it is really a wonderful place to work at, especially when i com-pare my jobs with those that other people my age have.

Regarding my per-sonal life, i am mar-ried. i got married when i went abroad. My husband is actually f o r -

eign,

he is Belgian. i have two kids with 3,5 and 1,5 year old respectively. They are both wonderful and very time consuming.

How do you evaluate your work/life balance?

i don’t think there is a balance: it is very difficult to find a balance. i think we are very lucky because of our flexible jobs. i try to go home early so i can

spend some time with my kids, they go to bed very early and i work in the evening but then they also wake up very early. But the nice thing about my job is that i can work a lot from home which allows me to be with my children a lot. That’s part of the dream job i have basically.

You have been in Brus-sels and London, what

Prof. Susana Peralta interview with the coordinator of the Masters in economics

INTERVIEWOPINION

observe that are influenc-ing citations (they can be ability, propensity to re-search, etc). Regarding the observable variables, as expected, it is not just what you write, but who you are. Education back-ground revealed to be cru-

cial: to have an undergrad from Nova or Católica significantly increase au-thors’ citations; if you then move to a top Phd, it’s also relevant, but un-expectedly not so impor-tant as the undergrad. To invest initially in a strong reputation is also crucial;

then the process might be self reinforced: once bet-ter, always better, is not a an improper lemma. To publish with other authors is also an advantage, even though we could foresee that the impact comes ei-ther through the personal characteristics of the co-author or through the ex-pertise of scholars with whom you co-author. The number of institutions af-filiated – a possible proxy of network -, has also a middle impact. when it comes to journals, to pub-lish in the iVY league is a clear guarantee of success.

The study addresses other variables but we will stay with the broad find-ings. we saw how citations are important; anyway, as Tuckman and leahey wrote in 1975, it should be noted that a distinc-tion exists between the re-

Pedro Portugal Pedro Santa Clara

José Mata José Ferreira Machado

Some of Nova’s most cited economists

turns to research and the returns to publication. A similar distinction may be explored when it comes to returns to research vs re-turns to citations, whatev-er those returns are. After all, citations are not every-thing!

Diogo Carvalho

“(...)it’s not just about holding top PhDs, having good co-authors and so

on”

June, 2012June, 201210 11INTERVIEWINTERVIEWwere the main differenc-es you found relative to Portugal?

The first thing is the weather (laughs). Talk-ing seriously, i think the working atmosphere in those places was much more relaxing than in Portugal. i think Portu-gal suffers from formal-ity issues, which is really counterproductive. work-ing more informally fos-ters interaction and that is good because it makes ideas evolve.

in terms of your private life, it is hard to say. The fact that you are abroad and far from your circle of friends and family changes the way you usu-ally interact with people. Most of my closest friends were actually people i met abroad. Regarding city differences, london and Brussels are both very dy-namic cities and there’s also the multicultural as-pect of the cities. Even though it is changing, lis-bon is still a very Portu-guese, very monocultural city. Not like london or Brussels where you live a very multicultural life.

What is your motiva-tion to get involved in your students projects?

Because i love the stu-dents, that’s the first thing. The interaction with the students is one of the things that i like the most

in my job. The students are used to sit in a classroom, taking notes and study for the exams. But getting your hands on a project is a dramatically differ-ent learning process and

i really like seeing people progress through these steps and learning on their own. it is like seeing the students awakening for this world where things are not always like in the books. in that sense, i like to share their frustrations when they are facing dif-ficulties presented in real projects and watch them overcoming them and evolve as students.

Between Católica and NOVA, both universities where you have worked and informal “rivals”, what are the main differ-ences? Which one do you find to be better?

in Católica i was a stu-dent and then a Teach-ing Assistant and here at Nova i already joined as a Professor, so these are dif-

ferent experiences to me. Also, i have already spent more years at Nova than at Católica. Nowadays i feel closer to Nova; this is the place where i come to work every day but i do feel strong and emotional feelings about Católica. i remember my times as a student as very happy ones. i also have very good relationships with my for-mer professors, who are now my colleagues, and i am very thankful to them because they were the ones that first taught me to love economics. But, as i said, i am very happy to be here at Nova and i wouldn’t switch for a mil-lion dollars. i think Nova is in many aspects more informal and even to some extent a freer place, a qual-ity i treasure a lot.

What are your compe-tences as the new coor-dinator of the Masters of Economics?

That’s a very good ques-tion. i don’t know. i think that these things have to rotate just because when you are in the same place for a while you run out of ideas. One of the good things that i have is close-ness to students, which i think is very important. it is important to get feed-back as students are the ones with the informa-tion to change the Mas-ters of Economics, which

has many things that have to be changed. i’m also a person that likes to talk to people, not only the students: i listen to my colleagues and their opinions, i don’t mind knocking on doors try-ing to build bridges across people. But i don’t have any revolutionary idea to change the Masters. This is how i see it.

In your opinion, what is the current state of the Masters of Economics here at NOVA?

i think we have im-proved with time. The transition to Bologna was not an easy thing to do; the faculty didn’t have the ex-perience. when we started to change the Masters, we have done a very direct change from the bach-elor. it created something that was not appealing to the students, who did not understand the idea of the masters. But we have been improving. i would wantv this Masters to be a fun experience to the students and to be more fun, students should get their hands on problems of the real world and have more projects (like NEC), and that is what is miss-ing from this masters, just like finance and manage-ment students have (for example, field labs). This is a challenge to overcome in the next 2 years.

There are other prob-lems. when i first taught Microeconomics in the masters of Economics (2007), there was total overlap with the subjects taught in the bachelor, like what is happening in Game Theory now. All these things are changing little by little, as well as other things that need to change with time. i would like to encourage my col-leagues to make the cours-es more policy oriented: models are very important but the step to translate these into the real world problem should be taken. This is also something that is missing.

What would you change if you had the op-portunity?

i want the students to be able to experience and to have practical experi-ence with Economic jobs, which is already some-thing that is changing with new projects and field labs. we are getting to a situa-

tion in which students are already able to join proj-ects and work on interest-ing things from a policy point of view, which may help them get an idea for what they want for their future career.

i want better coordi-nation between research master and the masters

on Economics and i also want to continue working on the excessive overlap of courses. The students cannot sit in the lectures listening to things they al-ready know. But for that i need your feedback. if you don’t tell me, it’s impos-sible. it’s much more effi-cient if you do it for us.

The agenda of the school is to improve your experience as students in the masters of Econom-

ics. i’m just an instrument in that agenda: i’m here to get information from the students and take it to the people that influence de-cisions. This school was born as an Economics school, so Economics is an important part of the school’s identity.

What is your relation-ship with Professor Dan-iel Traça?

In your opinion, is NOVA SBE increasingly becoming a school fo-cused on management, disregarding economics?

i have an excellent rela-tionship with daniel. He’s one of the main mentors of the idea of me being the academic director of the masters of Econom-ics and i love to work with

him. Everything i told you about the informal way of working at NOVA, that’s daniel’s way of work. i don’t think i would be able to work in the traditional way. That characteristic is why things happen. if i have an idea, if he likes the idea, he makes it hap-pen. My relationship with daniel could not be bet-ter. He’s one of my favorite colleagues and the school was very lucky that he joined us at some point. Through revolutionary ideas, he transformed the school for better.

we share the same views on the economics/management balance. The world has changed and it would be foolish for us to go on behaving as it there was no change. There is room in the world for pure economics departments, but then it would have to be very big to become ex-cellent and attract talents. in the problems of reputa-tion, there is an effect that is impossible to mimic. it was very clever for the school to position itself as a leader in manage-ment market, something much more difficult with economics. Economics and Management should be complementary and balanced. Having a good reputation as a business school can only help the economics department. it shows that we exist in the

“I try to go home early so I can spend some time with my kids, they go to bed

very early and I work in the evening but

then they also wake up very early.”

“The agenda of the school is to improve your experience as

students in the mas-ters of Economics. I’m just an instru-

ment in that agenda”

June, 2012June, 201212 13INTERVIEW

This text was born with a title, “10 changes to

make in our students”. As my thoughts matured, it evolved to 5+5, five char-acteristics i would change in the students, and five characteristics i would definitely keep. The point of view is, of course, that of a teacher. Putting my-self in the shoes of stu-dents, after so long on the other side, is not easy. it would be more reviving my student’s time rather than “live” what it is being a student today.

The list of what we like

and do not like in students also depends on the way each course starts, the em-pathy created, or not, with each group of students. in small groups, punctual-ity in starting lectures is less of a problem than in large groups; small rooms with easy circulation paths promote physical proxim-ity and a better reading of body language, about students being bored or tired, or both. The mo-ment of the day, morning, lunchtime, after lunch, mid-afternoon, influences how wake students are

and their availability to participate in class discus-sions. And, of course, we have different assessments of what is more relevant or more salient in each group and in each student. A characteristic favoured by one professor maybe seen as unpleasant by another. All this to say the two lists below is the result of my preferences and my cur-rent state of mind.

what i would like to

change in students of Nova SBE:

1. Obsessions To reduce the obses-

sion with the grades. i understand as natural that students worry about grades. i understand they try to achieve the highest grades. But there is a line that divides healthy con-cerns and obsession. it is true that important de-cision in the near future are likely to be dependent from these grades, and in some cases it will be de-pendent. But in three or five years from now, the professional achievements will be more relevant for the career. And what a student can achieve as a professional later in life depends more on the

knowledge and training she/he has acquired than on the grade of a particular course. Maximizing grade average does not corre-spond necessarily to the maximization of acquired knowledge and training. Choosing a course on a particular subject with the sole aim of improv-ing grade average instead of choosing one that will be more valuable for the intended professional ca-reer involves a trade-off of immediate gain in grade against better prepara-tion for the future. it is a trade-off often solved by students in a sub-optimal way.

2. Fears Students should lose the

fear of proposing new ac-tivities and of contributing to improve their academic and life experiences. Be it due to being shy, because they believe nobody is go-ing to pay attention, or any other reason, there are comments, suggestions, changes, etc., which are left behind. And everyone loses. Probably not in all occasions the department has been receptive. Some-times with good reasons, sometimes with no valid reasons. But the labour

5 things i would change/keep in Nova studentsby Professor Pedro Pita Barros

OPINIONworld, thus attracting tal-ented students and teach-ers. i would have preferred the world to be different… but who doesn’t?

How do you see NO-VASBE in an internation-al context?

The school really be-came a player in the in-ternational market of business schools. it is not comparable to how it was when i first came here. The school shows up in the rankings, we devel-oped networking, we’re signing a lot of double de-grees with many different schools. The crowd of for-eign students that i have now is not comparable to what i used to have 8 years ago. i can now be teaching to a class where half of the students are foreigners, something not possible in 2004. The school was greatly improved in this aspect and the European market for Masters is still not very well defined and Nova has positioned itself quite strongly. The school has been taking steps in the right direction.

Having an extensive background on Public Economics, how do you see the recent measures taken by the Portuguese government?

i don’t think that my background as a public economist gives me an ad-vantage in this topic. That

is probably a question to be made to a macroecono-mist. But i have my opin-ion. i think that the gov-ernment didn’t have much choice. we need to give a very strong signal that we want to change to the international institutions that are helping us out, because otherwise they won’t give us the money. if we want their help, we need to comply with their rules. However, i do think there are some degrees of freedom in the actions to be taken. But i don’t know if there would be a way to do things better, because you have to decide really quickly and there is not much time to think about the policies. Plus in Portu-gal it is very hard for the government to find any evidences on which to base its policies decisions because there is lack of data and sometimes it is not very reliable.

There are not many mea-sures targeting the main problems of our economy, the so called structural problems that would put us back in a growth track. For instance, in the public sector, one of the prob-lems in this country is the lack of motivation of the public sector to perform, which brings us back the fact that you (economic students NEC) are collect-ing the data for the troika to follow the application of

the measures when obvi-ously someone in the pub-lic sector should be doing that for the government.

i am not too optimis-tic: i am not criticizing the government because i think they are doing what they need to do, but i would like to see them communicating clearly and announcing what are the next steps. what is the Government planning to do to solve the structural problems?

In your opinion, what defines a motivating stu-dent?

in general i find the stu-dents very motivating. But for me the most motivat-ing students are the ones who follow their inner feeling about what they want to do in life. i think that is the most important thing. That is probably the reason why i like this work so much, because at your age everything is possible and you have no sunk costs. it is amazing to work with people who are looking for the world in many directions, have a lot of freedom to choose and that is very inspiring in itself.

Favorite sport: Swimming

Favorite artist: Jarvis Cocker (lead singer for the band Pulp)

Favorite dish:“Peixe no Sal”

Cause you stand for: Planet and all sorts of freedom

Ideal vacationTracking

HobbiesMusic and cooking (also reading and cinema)

Curiosities

Ana Lopes and

Luís Filipe

June, 2012June, 201214 15

market will not be kinder to you than the university. Students have to insist and keep the faith that good ideas in the end succeed.

3. Execution Students need to or-

ganize the pace of study, plan ahead and above all execute the plan to which they committed. The main problem does not lie with planning. it is often the case that students discuss their planning at the start of the course. in the end, reality becomes quite dif-ferent. The difficulty is in keeping the individual commitment to do it as planned. There will be a million reasons to devi-ate, and some deviations are unavoidable, but for most of it the initial plan was feasible. learn how to execute your plans.

4. Group manage-ment

Students need to im-prove their group interac-tions, and focus on what is to be done. Foreign stu-dents should be amazed with the low productivity of group meetings. i am amazed just from listen-ing how these meetings evolve. Stick to the time-tables, prepare beforehand the meeting, do not lose the first half hour, or the first full hour, with lateral topics, all of it will con-

tribute to a more produc-tive and rewarding group work. And contribute to have more free time to dedicate to other activi-ties.

5. Handwritingi assume my personal

interest in this issue, as a better handwriting from students will easy my ef-fort on reading and un-derstanding exams and assignments. it would definitely help an effort from students in having a decent (i mean legible) handwriting, associated, whenever possible, with a good organization of ideas and text. See handwritten assignments as a test to your skills of communica-tion, graphic communica-tion in particular. due to more intense use of com-

puters and short messag-es (either email or sms), there is neglect on the use of handwritten notes as a way to communicate. This is not a request for stu-dents to write more with pen or pencil instead of a computer keyboard. it is a request for attention so that when students write a text this becomes an effec-tive exercise in communi-cation.

Next, the list of five characteristics i want to keep in the students of Nova SBE:

1. Generosity i admit it can be a biased

view, as i have been teach-ing in the masters and not to undergraduates. The generosity of students in getting involved with the

school and society is clear. it is not always easy for students to answer all re-quests directed to them, from classes, skills mod-ules, trips, parties and civ-ic participation.

2. Will power Or, perhaps, a better

term is resilience, or en-durance. The workload demanded by the school is high, although in most future professional careers will not be very different, and often will actually be demanded. However, the demands made, together with freedom to choose what and when to work, makes the will power to finish, and with good per-formance, an important characteristic of students. Other ways of expressing this would be attitude or

achievement drive.

3. Ideas it is demotivating to

face a sleeping audience, uninterested and uninter-esting. i had rarely that feeling at Nova SBE. it may be because i have not

paid enough attention, or my misreading of external signals of boredom. Still, in a quick test with a col-league, i found this to be a general perception. The students at Nova SBE have their own views and ideas, they are, generally speak-ing, willing to listen new ideas and discuss them.

4. Intellectual hon-esty

learning implies open-ness to what is new and ability to discuss, to un-derstand arguments and evidence. Arguments are discussed and validated, or not, on the basis of

OPINION

their intellectual merit. The willingness to change opinion and to learn with own mistakes demands an intellectual honesty that we, fortunately, find in most of the students. within this general issue, i also include diversity of

preferences – there are students that like math-ematical models, there are students that hate math-ematical models; there are students that prefer theory, there are students that prefer empirical evi-dence; there are students that like the broad picture and do not look into the details, there are students that prefer each point viewed with (almost ex-cruciating) detail even if a cost of not seeing the full picture; there are students looking for broad prin-ciples, there are students looking for instant recipes for problems. There are

multiple combinations of these characteristics. The coexistence of this diver-sity is not always simple. The path of each student implies intellectual hon-esty to survive all different views.

5. Faith despite all troubles and

problems, most students keep a contagious happy faith in the future, a de-sire to make a difference; in some, there is the goal of being citizens of the world. There are worried faces at times, mainly dur-ing exams and midterms. Still, it is common to see the good mood present on who is self-confident. There are also, naturally, extremes: students with low self-esteem with no reason, while other think too much of themselves. They are not the majority.

if i had to summarize the above two lists, the regularity is simple – what i would like to change in students is mainly associ-ated with processes, while i want to preserve the ex-isting good spirit.

Out of curiosity, and to assess whether, or not, i was missing some essen-tial point, i asked some, very few, students about it; what would they change in their colleagues and what wouldn’t they alter.

The first reaction was sur-prise, revealed by unusual opening of eyes. But not many answers were given. Too highlights only. One is the so-called “competi-tion” between students, which is part of the repu-tation of the school in Portugal. Mentioned by the Portuguese students as something that needs to be changed, it is seen by the foreign students as of minor intensity relative to their original schools. Although Portuguese students think that there is lack of cooperation among them, such a view seems somewhat unfair in an international context. The second aspect is more a statement than some-thing that can be changed, in particular in the under-graduate studies: the lack of diversity in background of the student body. Curi-ously, one of the first uS professors hired by the school, going back a de-cade, when asked about what was the most strik-ing difference between the two countries in terms of students, answered pre-cisely with the lack of di-versity. in his eyes, the stu-dents looked all the same in terms of culture, inter-ests, ethnic background, income, etc.…

Prof. Pedro Pita Barros

OPINION

June, 2012June, 201216 AFTER NOVA

i first learnt about McK-insey & Company dur-

ing a Calculus ii class, when some friends of mine wouldn’t stop blab-bering about the firm’s presentation session to students, which was going to take place right after the class. They wound up con-vincing me to join them…i must confess i was not particularly impressed, perhaps because the ses-sion coincided with my lunch time and whenever i spend more than one and a half hour without grabbing a bite i become the grumpiest person in the room, and trust me, you would not want to be by my side at that time! Anyway, the name “McK-insey” gradually faded away over the next couple of months, only to resur-face during the Summer: the “recruiting season” had just begun and i didn’t even understand why on earth was my name on their list…i was flattered and at the same time em-barrassed, not wanting to disappoint anyone; none-theless, i had nothing to lose so i went through all the recruiting stages, one by one. i passed the initial test and after a few months of freezing the process

the Summer internship i was literally jumping for sheer joy around the house! The Summer in-ternship was a great ex-perience and it motivated me even further to want-ing to work for McKinsey in the future. The project i was staffed in was really interesting and the team…the team was amazing to work with, i kept on learning something new every single day, if not ev-ery single minute spent by their side. i felt as if i had been working for McKin-sey for ages, the people are very welcoming and never

while living in Prague (during my Erasmus Pro-gram), all the nerves and anxiety came back when they scheduled the inter-views. As soon as i got the call announcing that i had been successful in getting

allow for new hires to feel the least bit alienated. At the end of the internship, i was offered a job in the firm, which i promptly ac-cepted.

i was supposed to have taken my Master’s de-gree in-between, but af-

17AFTER NOVAter suspending it, i ended up taking a sort of a year off, during which i taught data Analysis and also linear Algebra to 1st year bachelor students from Economics and Business, at NOVA School of Busi-ness and Economics. i guess i never stopped be-ing nervous every time i got into a classroom, but it was one of the most grati-fying experiences i have had so far, i loved teach-ing and it was something i could see myself doing for a long time, without ever getting bored. Not only did i have the chance

to help students, but i also learned a lot from them, especially people-wise, and i can guarantee you that these “people-skills” are fundamental both for your professional life (as we all have to deal with people even if we would prefer not to) and your personal life: “iQ will get

you through school, but EQ (emotional intelli-gence) gets you through life”.

After a calm year, i fi-nally joined McKinsey in September 2011. i admit that it was pretty darn scary, it was my first job out there in the real world, and i could only think of the high, and soon to be proved completely unad-justed, expectations that

had for me. One piece of advice: don’t let your-self get absorbed in these kinds of thoughts! Keep in mind that you can and should ask for help any-time you feel like you need guidance.

well, what can i tell you so far? i have already been in 3 completely dif-ferent projects, for the first 2 of them, which were much shorter than typical projects, i was in lisbon (until the end of Novem-ber) and then i joined my current project in luanda, Angola and this is where

i am writing you from. A significant part of our projects are in Angola, a country filled with great opportunities that stem from the reconstruction stage it is going through. i believe that the project i am currently staffed in is one of the highest im-pact-generating projects i have underwent or ever dreamed of undergoing at McKinsey, and it is deeply

inspirational. A few weeks ago i actually chose to prolong my stay here from an initially predicted pe-riod of 4-5 months to 10 months, this way i will be able to stay in the project for a bit longer, although there are, of course, also personal reasons behind this decision.

Anyhow, there is a lot to do in this large African country aside from work! For those who love to go out at night, the word “dull” does not exist in any dictionary around this corner of the world, and i

am sure you will eventual-ly come to learn partying like true Angolans, with ease and spontaneity. For travel addicts such as my-self, you will be amazed at all the marvels Angola has to offer. You will have the opportunity to be in perfect harmony with na-ture: from waterfalls to the desert, oasis, and beautiful hidden beaches!

i feel really lucky to be working at McKinsey, and regardless of what may happen in the future, i know for sure that this is a priceless and rewarding experience, which is mak-ing me grow day by day.

Mariana Reis

“The summer in-ternship was a

great experience and motivated me

even further to work for McKinsey

in the future”

After a calm year I joined McKinsey in September 2011. I admit it was prety

darn scary...”

“The project I’m currently staffed in is one of the highest impact-generating

projects I have underwent or ever dreamed of under-

going...”

“I was in Lisbon until the end of

November and then I joined my current project in Luanda”

“Joining McKinsey”, by Mariana Reis

June, 2012June, 2012 19HUMOUR18 Book Review

The Dragon ball conspiracy

No other cartoon has ever captured a more

everlasting place in the hearts of a generation than dragon Ball. A magical tale of resillience, friend-ship and a living teste-mony that, if your scream hard enough, you can become invencible.

But in the dragon ball universe, the dragon balls are not the only things that are hidden. There are also dark disturbing secrets. in the be-ginning of the story, Goku and her friend Bulma travel around the world meeting all kinds of people and creatures. it was a world filled with dogs and bears and pigs that talked and walked like other hu-man beings and went about their business like everyone else. They even participated in the mar-tial arts tournaments.

But now think... think real hard about where most of those lovable crea-tures are in dragon Ball Z and GT. The truth is that, unless they were already Goku’s friends, they just aren’t there.

what happened to them?

i would have watched

the entirety of dragon ball Z and GT in order to con-firm the real magnitude of this phenomenon and track how many, if any, of these characters actu-ally remained, but unfor-tunately, i have recently acquired a life, which rendered me unable to do so. Nevertheless, it is unquestionable that their numbers decreased dra-matically. what is the sole explanation? Geno-cide…

i find it revolting that everyone seems to be concerned with

warmongers that kidnap children in

Africa, and then don’t even realize that this type of brutal genocide

occurred.But now we must ask

ourselves an inevitable question: why didn’t Goku stop this madness?

was he unaware? is it pos-sible that our childhood hero was so disconnected from the world around him that this horror just missed him? it doesn’t seem plausible. was he unable to stop it? did the invincible Goku discov-ered a foe that not even the most powerful ka-mahameha could defeat? if so, why didn’t we, the fans, see this? don’t we

?

Going deeply into the u n d e r d e v e l o p e d

countries’ reality over the past decades, The white Man’s Burden exploits extensively the problems associated with foreign aid, the conditions under which it’s provided, the obstacles the aid cam-paigns usually face.The white Man’s Burden makes a compelling at-tempt to access the foreign aid pre-requisites that should be met in order to ensure successfulness in fostering growth rates through an improvement in the institutional and legal environments. with this purpose, william Easterly assures that the international community has to jointly address is-sues as broad as endow-ments and distribution of natural resources, access to health education, the ability in accessing sav-ings, insurance and credit markets, the rights con-ceded to the entrepreneur-ial and individual initia-tive, the government and institutional responsive-ness, among others. up to this point, nothing should have surprised you.

However, more than the diagnosis of what is going wrong in international aid or how western societ-ies can propose solutions

which can prove to be ef-fective in the development of poorer countries, what is really original in this book is the way all these questions are addressed.

in a clarifying approach, the author starts by con-trasting between the do-nor agents (governments or foreign aid agencies) the planners’ ineffective, bureaucratic, presumptive and idealistic approach from the searchers’ prag-matic, down-to-earth, comprehensive approach based in trial and error experience that privileg-es incremental solutions combined with piecemeal improvements according to the feedback received.

Throughout the pages, Easterly focus his criti-cisms on the prevalence of the so-called Big Push Approaches, corollary of Mao’s China, combined with the obstinacy in cen-tralized directed reforms and programs conducted from offices headquarted in washington or Geneva.

Concretely, Easterly de-nounces what he defines as the legend of the Big Push Approach founded in the generalized perception that the “poorest coun-tries are stuck in a pov-erty trap from which they cannot emerge without an aid-financed big push”, the

assumption that merely the poverty trap justi-fies lousy growth without considering the impact of factors such as bad lo-cal governments and weak self-reinforced social in-stitutions. Furthermore, the white Mans’ Burden argues: “The west cannot transform the Rest. it is a fantasy to think that the west can change complex societies with very differ-ent histories and cultures into some image of itself ” concluding, paradoxically, that the west imposes cen-tralized solutions when no one in western societies believes in central plan-ning anymore.

This perspective is complemented with some criticisms at micro level. in Easterly’s opinion, bu-reaucrats in international agencies devote more ef-forts to observable activi-ties which leads to a shift in power inside agencies’ towards planners. On top of that, planners perform better if goals are fewer but tangible, measurable and realistic rather than if they are vague and “ill-de-fined dreams”, when they are able to identify linkag-es from efforts to results. Additionally, Easterly says that lack of accountability and measurability are the key problems in agencies

s i n c e they do not col-lect local’s feedback to correct and evaluate the effectiveness of their pro-grams. Further, Easterly argues that agencies over-emphasize self goals, lack peer-revision and don’t work in a coordinated way, leading to an overlap-ping of agents in the field.

The white Man’s Burden has the merit of conveying all the challenges related with the international aid from a perspective that ends up by making us doubt its full effectiveness. Nevertheless, despite the extensive introspective di-agnosis carried out about the failures of western intervention, the book is also full of generic sug-gestions lacking empirical foundations. in a nutshell, Easterly did a great job in diagnosing and identify-ing the failures of inter-national aid but the same cannot be said about pre-senting alternative plans and solutions.

André Coelho

“White Man’s Burden” by william Easterly

June, 2012

deserve to be there for the ups, but also for the downs of our hero? Or is it pos-sible that the truth is even

more shocking? Ask your-self: who had the means to wipe out potentially millions of these animal-

20 HUMOUR

“Dragon Ball was a world filled with dogs and bears and pigs that talked and

walked like other human beings and went about their

business like every-one else.”

“Are we, as a so-ciety, going to turn a blind eye to geno-cide simply because

it happened in a fictional world that doesn’t exist? I sure as hell hope not.”

NOVA News TeamExecutive Staff:Gonçalo Coronha, luís Filípe and Rafael Barbosa

Journalists:Ana lopes, André Coelho, André Agostinho, Clara Gil,

diogo de Carvalho, José Cadima, luís Fonseca and Miguel Aguiar

people and then prevent us from seeing it besides Goku and his friends?

i hope to God i’m wrong. But what if i’m not? Are we, as a society, going to turn a blind eye to genocide simply because it happened in a fictional world that doesn’t exist? i sure as hell hope not.

By now, you’re wonder-ing what you can do about this. well, the first step is raising awareness: in the night of the national Mr. Satan day, we are go-ing to put up posters in every major city around the world. On the follow-ing morning, the world will know that something

happened to the animal-people of dragon Ball and then, it’s just a matter of bringing Goku to justice and have him explain ei-ther why he did it, or why he didn’t stop it.

i know this is a shock for

you. it was a shock for me too, but the truth comes at a high price. Even higher than the price for which they are trying to sell that Nova merchandise around campus. And that, my friends, is “saiyan” some-thing…

Rafael Barbosa