Carlos Serrano

Title: Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Economics

Years teaching at HEC: I have been a permanent faculty member at HEC Paris since September 2022, but taught a course in the MBA program during a research visit during the fall of 2021.

Education: PhD Economics from the University of Minnesota in the USA, MSc in Economics from University College London in the UK, and BSc in Economics from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain.

List of MBA courses you currently teach: Managerial Economics, Entrepreneurial Finance.

I knew I wanted to be a business school professor when….

I taught an MBA course at HEC Paris during a research visit during the fall of 2021. Never I had enjoyed teaching a course as much as I did when I taught MBA students at HEC Paris. So, this was the moment I realized my teaching and passion for economics could profoundly impact on how aspiring business leaders think and frame problems.

What are you currently researching and what is the most significant discovery you’ve made from it?

In a new research project, my collaborators and I are investigating the process of mentorship in entrepreneurship, the role that human and AI mentors play, the optimal balance between AI and human judgement, and ultimately the impact of AI assisted mentorship on entrepreneurship. The research project is very early stage and we have not yet made a significant discovery yet.

In another project, named “Acquiring Patents in Secret: Strategic Disclosure in Markets for technology,” my collaborators and I study the extent that firms that acquire patents in markets of technology delay the disclosure of these transactions to the public domain. We find that the disclosure of the transaction is faster when buyers work on technologies closely related to those acquired and when the buyers can credibly threaten to enforce the acquired patents against rival firms. We also find that buyers delay disclosure when firms that could be the seller have higher ability to enforce patent rights against potential infringers, suggesting that buyers take advantage of ability to deter competitors of firms that could be the seller in the transaction while keeping the transaction secret.

Our findings are relevant to the policy of mandating the disclosure of patent ownership, which was recently introduced in the United States Congress. Specifically, our findings provide implications for both what patented technologies are more likely to be affected by the policy and what firms are more likely to reduce their reliance on markets for technology to access resources and reinforce sources of competitive advantage.

If I weren’t a business school professor…

I would join a team of economists in a high technology company to theorize and experiment with their proprietary data to learn about the following. I would be most interested in investigating how does artificial intelligence enable new ways of employee training and organizing labor and tasks within the company. I would also be interested in studying how best can the company combine artificial and human intelligence to create complementarities and increase their rate of innovation.

What do you think makes you stand out as a professor?

I think it is my passion for economics and the effort I make to connect the concepts I teach to relevant everyday examples. For instance, I have illustrated a famous adverse selection theory by using a recent example of Zillow that had to discontinue its house-flipping business after losing over $880 million. The failure was due to its machine learning algorithm making acquisition at prices that did not account for homeowners knowing more about their houses than the algorithm, which resulted in Zillow buying houses primarily from owners whose properties required costly renovations, thereby making the deals unprofitable for the company.

One word that describes my first-time teaching:

I do not recall my first-time teaching as this was many years ago when I was a teaching assistant during my PhD studies in Minnesota, but I do recall well when I first taught my first class at HEC Paris in the fall of 2021. The word that best describes how I felt after teaching my first class is “epiphany” as I realized I was able to connect with the MBA students, learn about their experiences and aspirations, and have an impact on how they think and frame problems. I also learned I have an ability to connect theoretical concepts in microeconomics to relevant everyday real-world examples.

And the word that defines how I felt before teaching my class at HEC Paris is “terrified.” Although I had spent about two months preparing to teach the course and my co-author and current colleague Thomas Astebro, who has known me for 15 years, told me I would do a great job, I was terrified when I entered the classroom as I was not sure I could really do this. So, what best describes my first-time teaching at HEC Paris is a mixed of “epiphany” and “terrified.”

Professor I most admire and why:

My colleague Jeremy Ghez, who also teaches in the MBA program at HEC Paris, is an excellent teacher and mentor. Mostly I have learned from colleagues about how to structure classes and connect research and real-world examples to MBA teaching – I learned this from Jeremy. He is simply great and HEC Paris is lucky to have him. As for research, I admire my collaborators. George Chondrakis and Rosemarie Ziedonis, with whom I have written several papers, are very thoughtful and write beautifully. Thomas Astebro because he is direct and makes everything anyone sends him better and does it 10x faster. And Nicolas Figueroa because I have not met another better and trusted person in my life to brainstorm and theorize about a hard economic problem.

What do you enjoy most about teaching business students?

It is a combination of learning from their countries of origin and working experience. It is also seeing my courses can contribute to materializing their aspirations and dreams, whether it is finding their dream job, staying in France or moving elsewhere in Europe, or as simple as rediscovering economics and finance.

What is most challenging?

There are two main challenges. The first one is how best to transfer knowledge to the group of students taking my courses, whether this is an MBA core course in the first term of the program or a course in a specialization later in the program, as the group of students can be very different. To illustrate, the needs and aspirations of the same student can vary a lot in the MBA program due to the students gaining new knowledge in their courses, peer effects as they spend so much time with their classmates, the extent of their eagerness to look for a job, etc.

The second challenge is a way to validate what has been the cognitive retention of the knowledge I have transferred. The thinking is that I could transfer exactly the same knowledge but the mode of how I transfer such knowledge –-relying on real world examples, case studies, inviting practitioners– and the extent that such a mode fits the characteristics of the students can lead to more or less understanding by the students. These are the two main challenges: how best to transfer knowledge and how to validate that the knowledge I have transferred turns into understanding.

In one word, describe your favorite type of student:

I need two words: interesting and interested. I am really lucky because HEC Paris attracts a very disproportionately large number of students that share a diverse origin, a very rich work experience, and they are very much interested in learning and making the best out of their MBA.

What are your hobbies?

I collect 16th century maps by cartographer Abraham Ortelius. Abraham Ortelius is considered the father of modern cartography. The maps are beautiful on their own, but they also reflect the interest of the society in these times in the beginning of world exploration. Most days I read the economic newspapers and magazines, especially the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal (I have stopped reading the New York Times, as I often find the articles unfathomable). Hoping to learn how to be a better human being, I also read books to learn about people lives’, history, and future. Perhaps more particular is that I really like to talk to strangers or anyone who I think might be of interest due to their job or interests, and I purposedly organize meetings with people, including research workshops, to make this possible. I do this because, over the years, I found that I disproportionately find that the concepts and ideas that are particularly new to me and that have the greatest potential for further development arise when I interact with people that are not (yet) in my inner circle.

How will you spend your summer?

The bulk of my summer will be spent working on a new research project named “economics of mentorship.” The project is very early stage, so it needs substantial amount of work to define what is and what is not mentorship today and what will or will not be mentorship in an AI world. Because for the past years, and still today, I have been working on “strategic disclosure of patent acquisitions,” I will present this research in conferences in Crete in Greece and Chicago in the USA. Finally, I will be spending my vacation, about 10 days or so, in Ortygia in Sicily.

Favorite place(s) to vacation:

Ortygia in Sicily and Jerusalem in Israel. Both are unique historical places that I like to visit. I also used to visit the southern coast of Spain in the Atlantic Ocean, especially around the city of Cadiz. The beaches are great. Moreover, this area is also known for superb white wines for the summer like Manzanilla and Fino.

Favorite book(s):

I am currently reading “Diplomat Among Warriors,” by Robert Murphy and love the book. This is a memoir recounting his diplomatic missions in Munich, Paris, North Africa, etc. during pivotal moments such as Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, the Nazi invasion of France, and the allied invasion of French North Africa. It is an appropriate time to read the book given the ongoing geopolitical tensions, such as the war between Ukraine and Russia, the resurgence of extreme right and nationalistic parties in Europe, and the broader unrest in Western societies.

What is currently your favorite movie and/or show and what is it about the film or program that you enjoy so much?

In line with the answer to the previous question, it is also an appropriate time to re-watch or watch, if you have not yet, the documentary AlphaGo. AlphaGo presents the journey of the AlphaGo artificial intelligence program developed by Google’s DeepMind as it challenges one of the world’s top Go players. Watching AlphaGo today is relevant because it offers insights of the human aspects of the confrontation with artificial intelligence; that is, with the machine, including emotions and potentially the broader implications of new development in artificial intelligence for society. The documentary also portraits that combining AI and human intelligence can often be the best solution to move forward. It also provides a glimpse of what the future might look like: that machines can be a source of new ideas by showing us, the humans, something we have never ever discovered.

What is your favorite type of music or artist(s) and why?

I really like the rock band Dire Straits and their lead singer Mark Knopfler. I have all their CDs and the corresponding e-versions of the songs. Knopfler and Dire Straits’s lyrics, voice, guitar, and tempo fit me. To illustrate, I have been a fan since I was in middle school or so and I regularly re-discover their songs. However, most time these days I listen to podcasts. My favorite podcasts are: The Journal at the Wall Street Journal, All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg, Acquired, All Else Equal by Stanford GSB, The Intelligence from The Economist, and Sharp Tech by Ben Thompson. Listening to some of the most thoughtful people in the planet from my phone, whenever I want, and basically free, is something that still amazes me as millions of teenagers today can have access to the content and people I could not have even dreamt about when I grew up in the 1980s in a small village in Spain.

If I had my way, the business school of the future would have much more of this…

Continuous, modular learning experiences throughout a professional’s career. Traditionally, the MBA has been a strategic tool for individuals possessing specific knowledge and expertise to transition into new sectors or communities—essentially, a repositioning exercise. This investment of time, energy, and money is aimed at making a significant leap into different industries or communities. At HEC Paris, the motto our Dean of the MBA Brad Harris highlights captures this very well: “We Change People’s Lives.” However, as the frontier of knowledge rapidly advances with artificial intelligence, this will no longer be a one-off endeavor but a constant requirement.

In response, we should want to envision a future where ‘pills’ of MBA-like education are administered regularly, targeted not just to individuals but also to groups, to keep up with continuous evolution and to capture value from staying relevant within the professional landscape. To deliver this modular learning experiences, we, the professors, will need to adapt to changes in the business world and be able to adapt our curriculum frequently to reflect the latest trends, technologies, and practices. And doing this will require that we understand artificial intelligence in business, how and the extent to which artificial intelligence replaces the human as the only source of new knowledge creation and innovation, and the impact of how all this affects the environment and society.

To address these issues, my colleagues at HEC Paris and I are working on how best to integrate in the MBA the learnings that our centers of excellence (Hi! Paris, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute, and Sustainability and Organizations Institute) have developed through their ties to key stakeholders such as deep tech startups, corporations, investors, civil society, and regulators.

In my opinion, companies, and organizations today need to do a better job at…

Quickly adopt new knowledge, especially artificial intelligence technologies. The speed at which these technologies will be adopted will determine businesses and countries competitive advantage in the next decades. My collaborators and I think that mentorship, whether this is applied through artificial intelligence alone or a combination of human and artificial intelligence, can be a facilitator to adopt such technologies at a scale. Because mentorship can be a facilitator, my collaborators and I think that the economics of mentorship is the problem we want to investigate in the next 10 years.

I’m grateful for…

Being healthy and alive in these times, being surrounded by people that love me, and enjoying going to work every day whether this is on campus or elsewhere.