The College warmly congratulates Professor Ludovic Phalippou who has received The Jury’s Special Recognition Award at the International Film Festival The Hague. We asked him to tell us more about why a Professor of Financial Economics has received a film award.
You have made an award-winning film called Redeveloping Hope which is a teaching tool for understanding whether financial acumen can accelerate social change. What inspired you to use this medium?
Case studies have become a staple in business education globally since being introduced at Harvard Business School a century ago. They typically describe real-life business scenarios requiring decisions and stimulate critical discussion. Today’s students prefer fast, visual, and engaging content and traditional case studies have become less appealing. I wanted to use a video-based format to foster the same critical discussion of issues but in a new way. Redeveloping Hope presents the world’s first fully cinematic educational finance case study. We employed professional actors, and the film is scripted by professional writers and I, as an academic, acted as a sort of consultant. The result has been the creation of a story-like, engaging learning experience.
What impact are you intending for the film to have?
The film highlights the importance of mastering finance tools —capital structure, claim priorities, financial modelling, valuation, and cash sweep techniques — for decision-making, even in the context of social impact / blended finance solutions. The innovative format aims to spark student interests, so they are eager to dive into the Excel spreadsheet and all the data. More broadly, the movie also demonstrates how financial acumen can enhance socially-motivated investments.
A hundred years after Harvard pioneered written management case studies, I believe we have pioneered the first finance cinematic case study here in Oxford. Education is always evolving, and we must keep meeting the changing needs of our students.
What did you learn in the process of making the film?
That making a movie is very tedious, difficult, and costly.
How does it feel to win an award at the International Film Festival?
It feels great to be recognised in this way when you are one of the pioneers of a new genre. Also, the genre is inspired by a Russian, filmed and produced by a Chinese team, directed by a woman (Kate Zhu), has actors from America, India, England. Writers were American (the first writer is Afro-American). I am proud to see such a diverse team effort recognised.
You have also been named as been named as one of “The 40 Most Outstanding Business School Profs Under 40 In The World” by the business education website Poets&Quants. What do you enjoy most about adopting a creative approach to your teaching?
That was a while back. LOL. I enjoy the challenge of adapting educational tools to modern preferences, blending academic rigor with cinematic storytelling to enhance learning outcomes. I believe education is entertainment. Students should come to one of my lectures with the feeling that they will have a good time, they will laugh at times, be puzzled a few times, be forced to think hard on multiple occasions, and will have learned a few things that will probably be useful to them in the future, including things they would not have learned otherwise.
