Marcos Lima, Innovation From Bahia to Paris

Dr. Marcos Lima is in charge of the Marketing and Digital Sales specialisation at EMLV, a business school located in Paris, where he is associate professor and member of the De Vinci Research Center Business Group.

In French, a slight melodic accent gives a hint that Marcos Lima was born overseas. However, when he switches to English the second after, he could easily be taken for a native American. Let’s not maintain the suspense any longer, Dr. Marcos Lima was born in Bahia, Brazil, studied at the local Federal University and completed part of his PhD in Communications Technologies applied to Business Teaching at the University of Michigan. His education and career also took him to Austria and Germany. He has worked at the EMLV since 2009.

Teaching and researching in a human-sized school

Both as professor and researcher, Lima appreciates the collaborative atmosphere at EMLV, enabled by the school’s scale and philosophy. He often leads research work with fellow colleagues.

“My research focuses mainly on innovation and innovative companies. My recent articles have to do with a framework for understanding innovative business models and how you can visually support innovative decision making using this framework called the business model canvas”.

He recently submitted an article based on a typology of agility for small and medium-sized businesses, presented at the occasion of the DVRC Business Group seminar. This article has also been recently presented at the summer school seminar on agility and innovation organized by the research network on innovation in Nancy.

Lima created a three-dimensional tool aimed at SMB innovative managers, helping them benchmarking the best practices of three organisational models in one of the following dimensions: Structural Agility, Human Agility and Informational Agility. The tool was tested through the analysis of three case studies using the parameters of a diagnostics matrix. The case studies enabled the development of a fifteen-item scale tested with eighty experts on Agile Organisations. Dr Lima’s research’s resulting instrument is a twelve-item questionnaire meant for innovation managers to improve their organisational environment by identifying improvement opportunities in each of the three above-mentioned dimensions.

Training marketing and sales specialists

The Marketing and Digital Sales specialisation trains EMLV students to become quickly operational professionals in many sectors: BtoB, BtoC and industries in the fields of products and services. E-CRM, digital branding, community management and live marketing are central in the course, for future managers will necessarily have to take into account sales system data and social networks in their decisions. Taught in English, the Marketing and Digital Sales specialisation attracts foreign students, a great way to replicate the multicultural and international environment many future managers will experience in major companies.

Preparing students for professional life with project-based learning

The specialisation managed by Marcos Lima is project-based. EMLV students learn not only through lectures but to a greater extent through business games, mock-ups and case studies, a method Dr. Marcos Lima is particularly fond of. Among Lima’s publications, the book “Réussir vos études de cas” will help student succeed in their case-studies thanks to theoric insight and practical tools.