UQ Business School’s 18th annual students’ Research Colloquium was held last month at UQ Business School’s Executive Venue in the Brisbane CBD.
The annual Colloquium showcases the research ideas and plans of Business School Honours and PhD students and is used as a platform to provide support and constructive feedback for all early career researchers.
PhD students in particular can be at different stages in their research program, with some still exploring the theoretical frameworks and research methods that might dominate their research.
A ‘pitch book’ was implemented into the Colloquium last year containing more than 40 two-page pitch templates for all research students presenting throughout the day.
This format was used again this year with the pitches following UQ Business School Professor Robert Faff’s SSRN paper.
Professor Faff said the Colloquium presents an ideal forum to put premier research students to the test.
“Most students shine at the Colloquium with highly informative pitches that succeed in ‘starting the conversation’. The feedback on my approach to pitching to an academic expert continues to be strong and positive,” he said.
Six pitch winners were announced at the end of the day and were assessed on the following criteria, based on the written pitch:
• Clear and succinct pitch message
• Perceived serious effort
• Minimal repetition within the pitch
• Connectivity/flow of coherent theme across the template
• Success in ‘starting the conversation’ with an academic expert
• Faithful to the ‘Pitching Research’ philosophy
• Overall perceived quality of the pitch
Congratulations to the following Research Colloquium pitch winners:
Honours Pitch Winner: Jacob Morgan – ‘CEO Pay-Gap, Gender and Bank Risk-Taking’
Honours Runner Up: Yu Wang – ‘An investigation on insider trades activities before and going concern opinion withdrawals: Do insiders benefit from auditors’
PhD ‘Commerce’ Pitch Winner: Mark Bremhorst – ‘Improving situation awareness with digital representations’
Runner Up: Ronghong Huang – ‘CEO overconfidence and corporate financial decisions: Optimism versus miscalibration’
PhD ‘Management’ Pitch Winner: Nazila Barbakhani – ‘Usefulness of Psychophysiological measures in sustainable tourism’
Runner Up: Janine Lay – ‘Exploring inter-organisational collaborative practices for open innovation’
