Biography

Year of entry: 2014

Dissertation Committee: Vibha Gaba (Chair), Henrich Greve, Vikas Aggarwal, Brian Wu (University of Michigan)

Strategy Research Foundation (SRF) Dissertation Scholar Award, 2018-2020

PhD Rudolf & Valeria Maag Scholarship in Entrepreneurship, 2019-2020

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Research Interests

Opportunity Identification, Organizational Learning, Technology Management, Managerial Cognition, Machine Learning Methods

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Teaching Interests

Entrepreneurship, Technology Management, Managing Organizational Change, Business Analytics

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Overview

Amy's dissertation examines different aspects of organizational learning in the opportunity discovery process. The starting point of the research is, although the first challenges firms face in nascent markets are what opportunities to pursue and the iterative process to articulate the opportunities, these issues have not received sufficient scholarly attention in the organizational learning literature. Using rich data in the empirical setting of mobile application developers, Amy applies the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modelling method to construct a functionality landscape, a semantic space that reflect different functionalities in the market. She studies how the existence of different functional opportunities in nascent markets affect experiential and vicarious learning and what provides informational value that help them navigate where to search in this functionality landscape.

Amy is broadly interested in how managers interpret information and respond to changes in performance and evolution of technology and user preferences in the demand environment. She also explores these topics in the mutual fund industry and the instant photography industry.

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Work in Progress

1. Gaba, V., Lee, S., Meyer-Doyle, P., & Zhao-Ding, A (equal contribution). “Prior Experiences of Managers and Responsiveness to Performance Feedback: Evidence from Mutual Funds”— Revise & Resubmit at Organization Science

2. Zhao-Ding, A. “Product Experience and Learning to Identify Opportunities: Evidence from Mobile Application Developers” —job market paper

3. Zhao-Ding, A. “Product Strategy Revisited: How Product Pivoting and Abandonment Experience Inform Opportunity Evaluation” –dissertation chapter

4. Zhao-Ding, A. “Threat or Opportunity: Managerial Cognition and Vicarious Learning in the Functionality Landscape” –dissertation chapter

5. Zhao-Ding, A. “Organizational Attention and Growth Opportunity Identification in Instant Photography: Evidence from Polaroid and Fujifilm”— working paper

6. Zhao-Ding, A. & Aggarwal, V. “User Analytics and Adoption of New Technology: Mobile Application Developers in Augmented Reality (AR)”— data analysis

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Education

INSEAD (Singapore/Fontainebleau, France)
PhD Candidate in Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise Area (2014-Present)

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA)
Visiting PhD Student (Spring 2017)

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)
Master of Social Science in Global Political Economy (2010-2011)

Peking University (Beijing, China)
Bachelor of Arts in Economics (2006-2010)