Hi, I'm Pedro Tonhozi de Oliveira. I study how entrepreneurs and organizations create value under uncertainty—especially when AI reshapes judgment, coordination, and legitimacy.
I'm Pedro Tonhozi de Oliveira, an entrepreneurship scholar studying how ventures create and justify value—how value is defined, narrated, evaluated, and ultimately rewarded or rejected by different audiences.
I'm especially interested in settings where uncertainty is high and standards of “what counts” are contested—which is common in entrepreneurship and innovation.
My work combines theory development and empirical research. Conceptually, I focus on clarifying foundational constructs (e.g., value) and on what strong theorizing looks like in entrepreneurship research. Empirically, I study entrepreneurial ecosystems and venture evaluation processes, including field-based work in Brazil.
A recurring theme across my projects is the gap between what entrepreneurs do and how observers interpret it—often using different criteria depending on whether they are judging competence, legitimacy, impact, or authenticity.
Current research includes: theory development in entrepreneurship; a conceptual program on value; entrepreneurial ecosystem orchestration (Technovation); field-based data collection in Brazil; and work in social entrepreneurship on “goodness” versus “coolness” as distinct positive evaluations of entrepreneurs.
You can find my publications and profiles here: Google Scholar · ORCID iD
I am developing theory-focused work aimed at strengthening how entrepreneurship research builds explanations—clarifying constructs, mechanisms, and boundary conditions so ideas are precise enough to test and useful enough to matter in practice.
I examine “value” as a concept that is widely used but inconsistently defined across entrepreneurship and adjacent fields. The goal is to reduce conceptual slippage (value creation vs. capture vs. appropriation, subjective vs. objective value) and offer a clearer theoretical foundation for future work.
I study how entrepreneurial ecosystems are governed through orchestration—how lead actors (alone or jointly) shape institutions, relationships, and strategic direction to improve ecosystem-level outcomes.
I am conducting field-based research in Brazil to capture how entrepreneurs operate under real constraints and evolving institutional conditions. This work is designed to generate grounded insights and data that can speak to both theory and practice.
I investigate how entrepreneurs—especially social entrepreneurs—are evaluated along distinct positive dimensions such as perceived moral “goodness” and cultural “coolness.” This stream explores when those evaluations align, when they conflict, and what that tension means for legitimacy and resource acquisition.
Translated from the Portuguese. Originally published as “Novos hábitos fazem gastos com entregas crescerem 149% em 2020” in Valor Econômico.
Companies should strengthen their product teams to define AI strategies.
Spending on delivery grew 149% in 2020 against 2019, according to a survey by Mobills, a personal-finance management startup that analysed the expenses of 46,000 users across three delivery apps (iFood, Uber Eats and Rappi). December was the record month for orders. Compared with March 2020, the start of the pandemic, purchases rose 187%.
To keep pace with the rise in demand, logistics specialists recommend that companies examine investments in artificial intelligence (AI) systems, in order to better understand consumption habits, and create incentive and innovation policies that can accelerate the production of solutions “made in house”.
Delivery companies will have to invest in AI to understand customers’ new habits and take advantage of the data collected in their operations, says Pedro Tonhozi de Oliveira, research professor at the Innovation Centre of Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV). “It is like bringing the experience of Netflix recommendations to the selection of dishes and restaurants.”
For him, consumers do not use delivery apps to order food, but to order convenience and speed. “It is what is known as next-hour commerce,” he says. Along those lines, companies should strengthen their product teams to define customer needs and the goals they want to reach using AI algorithms.
When it comes to paving the way for new operations, Oliveira believes the greatest difficulty for companies will be finding talent from the technology sector.
“Professionals in this area, especially programmers in the Python and R languages, are rare and extremely highly valued in the market.”
Investing in training the workforce should therefore be the main focus, he says. These specialists need to understand not only the more technical solutions for the business, but to hold deep knowledge of customer, product and market.
The FGV professor also highlights the adoption of big data resources as another avenue for investment, mainly because of the data analysis that helps predict what a user wants, or triggers more accurate suggestions. “Nobody likes spending half an hour looking for something to order,” he says. But it is important to “balance” that help. “A generic or incorrect reading of consumer preferences can also spoil the buying experience.”
Translated from the Portuguese. Originally published as “Oportunidades empreendedoras para auxiliar os advogados e o poder judiciário” in GV Negócios.
When we think about entrepreneurs, lawyers and legal practitioners are not the first people who come to mind. We picture entrepreneurs as administrators and engineers specialising in finance, in innovation and in new products.
Lawyers and legal practitioners tend to be cautious, grounded in case law, avoiding risk and acting with a more reactive than innovative bent. Entrepreneurs, by contrast, are an entirely different specimen. They create new business models in response to a gap in the market, tend to bend the rules or write new ones, have the ability to influence people, are confident, and take calculated risks.
And yet it seems to me that lawyers and entrepreneurs share a good number of characteristics.
So what benefits can the union of law and entrepreneurship bring to the judiciary, to lawyers themselves, and to the wider community?
It is precisely on this subject that I want to share some experiences and initiatives.
The first concerns something much discussed by Brazil’s National Council of Justice (CNJ): the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the judiciary. Put simply, artificial intelligence means machines and computers able to imitate the perception, the learning, and the capacity to solve problems and make decisions inherent to the human mind. Much as it is talked about today, the term is not new, having been coined in the mid-1950s by John McCarthy during a conference at Dartmouth College.
Justice Dias Toffoli, one of the leading advocates of the technology, argues that replacing processes carried out by people with machines will guarantee greater speed and consistency in decision-making (Res. 332/2020 CNJ). On this view, removing the human factor would increase the compatibility of decisions with fundamental rights, ethics and access to information, promoting equality, freedom and justice for all.
According to Bráulio Gusmão, assistant judge to the CNJ presidency, the development of the Innovation Laboratory (Inova PJe) for PJe (the Electronic Judicial Process) means many of the steps towards using artificial intelligence have already been taken — but there is growing room to produce new AI models. These models are complex and demand research and study, and no court in Brazil today is in a position to do that work alone. In this setting, one demand for entrepreneurs is the creation of those models, not only in processing data but also in interpreting and analysing the information: in 2020 alone there were some 80 million cases moving through the judicial system.
For lawyers, access to case law favourable to their cases is fundamental. In the United States, companies such as RavelLaw have transformed the legal market with jurimetrics tools. Jurimetrics is the use of quantitative methods, generally probability and statistics, in law. RavelLaw offers a fast and straightforward way to locate case law by subject.
Continue reading here.
Between his research and course load, Entrepreneurship Instructor Pedro Tonhozi de Oliveira strives to challenge and innovate his online and classroom instruction with simple, yet effective, educational technologies.
When and how did you first get involved with online teaching at UMKC? In 2014, while in my first job as a TA here at UMKC, my advisor (Dr. Cory Beard) was doing a simple, but efficient and attractive, recording of his classes. For that, he was using a webcam on the top of those long LED desk lamps that you can get at any office store. He recorded his handwriting as he explained the complex equations of wireless communication system. This scheme was something that surprised me in a sense that I could be using it to my future students. Fast forward, I learned about the ins and outs of Blackboard and how to deliver compelling content to students. Later in 2016, I had the opportunity to teach on my own, I decided to apply all I learned into a flipped classroom style. We used videos, quizzes, group assignments, wiki, peer-and-self-review. It has been a unique and fun experience.
What is your field of research or area of study? What’s the most exciting thing happening today in your area of study or the most exciting project you’re currently working on? I’m at the finishing line of my interdisciplinary Ph.D. program at UMKC in Telecommunications & Computer Networking and Entrepreneurship & Innovation. My particular area of research is crowds and effects. I believe the thing that attracts me the most in my field is the innovative environment. Think about how advanced mobile phones are today. Just ten years ago, this was something that no one would believe would become a $1 trillion market. On projects I’ve been working on, I have two particularly interesting ones. The first, using human behavior in predicting and allocating capacity for 5G wireless networks. The translation for non-technical people would be something like we have a location. You connect your mobile phone at UMKC and a different one at the Plaza, both with capacity for 1000 users. Late afternoon, people leave work and school to go home or to shopping. Why should the capacity stay at 1000 at UMKC if we could transfer it to the Plaza (where the art fair is happening) and serve more people there? The second, crowdfunding (a crowd of people investing a small amount in a project in exchange for financial or non-financial return) is my focus in entrepreneurship. We found strong support that early-stage investment is necessary. Yet, late-stage investment is as important as the early-stage when you are expecting to receive funds.
What do you feel are the qualities that make for a good online instructor? First is passion. An instructor has to be passionate about the craft. I know that not everyone will do great online the same way they are in an on-site classroom. There is a lot of hunches you have to have to deal with situations that you will face in both environments. Second is patience; that is also a good one. Things happen at a different pace in an online environment. Some students respond right away. Others wait until the minute before the deadline. Yes, I know onsite is the same, but you might not have the end of the class in an online setting the same way you have in person.
Do you have a philosophy of teaching? If so, what
is it? Be strict and push your students to their limit. Use
common sense to balance it out. I found a lot of
students discovering new skills and achieving goals
that even they thought they could not do.
What do you like most about teaching online? What do you find most challenging? Getting students engaged has always been a challenge. And I guess this is not only for online courses. Communicating and creating a clear channel between you and your students is the best way to get them working. Seeing the outcomes met is the best part. How they interact, how they support each other and make new connections, in my opinion, is the best.
What principles, techniques, or tools do you use to engage students? First, I start my class with a course introduction video. I ask my students to give me a 30-seconds pitch about why they believe they will become a great entrepreneur. I get to know their motivation for enrolling in the course. Second, communication. Set your expectations clear day one. Create a folder with all deadlines and activities listed by the date when it is due. Students can see what’s coming up. Finally, if you bring a speaker for the class, in person or using Skype or FaceTime, I recommend you record and make it available for your students. Ask students to relate something the speaker said with something that supports or contradicts class material.
Who has inspired you in your life and why? I know this is sketchy, but one of my great inspirations comes from Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement. If you have not watched it, it is worth it, and you can find on YouTube. He said that he took classes in many different departments. These experiences helped him later at Apple. I always find the most compelling solutions to our problems is research from other departments. This idea motivated me to pursue a career in Telecommunications and Entrepreneurship. I believe I was the first in UMKC to go down this path, and I find it enlightening.
What’s your best advice to new online instructors? Rule #1. Invest in a decent
microphone. Your students
will be okay with a mediocre video quality if your
audio is clear. But they will hate you if the audio is
bad, and your video is HD or even 4k. Also, there is
an app called Ummo helps you to get rid of the
annoying filling words (e.g. like, actually, I mean,
sort of, kind of, and of course uh/um).
I enjoy teaching entrepreneurship as a toolkit for judgment: how to form good assumptions, test them cheaply, and communicate decisions under uncertainty. I also like connecting “classic” entrepreneurship questions (opportunities, resources, legitimacy) to contemporary issues such as AI adoption, digital transformation, and responsible innovation.
Teaching materials coming soon: syllabi, lecture notes, assignment templates, and examples of research-to-practice translation.
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