Other Useful Resources
(1) PDW on Optimal Distinctiveness returns to AOM 2021.
Video Recording: https://youtu.be/1geKPWiFbjU
(2) AOM 2019 PDW on "Optimal Distinctiveness" was again a great success!
(3) AOM 2018 PDW on "Optimal Distinctiveness" was a great success!
Program link: [click here]
Format & Structure: [click here]
(4) AOM 2017 PDW on "Optimal Distinctiveness"
For those who we missed at our 2017 PDW, here are the readings, presentation ppts, and testimonials:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/itb4m9xfpdailzw/AABer6u7fJWIwAl4oBcQsyGDa?dl=0
My overall teaching philosophy is to use the precious classroom time for two-way learning experience. I encourage students to spend time discussing, analyzing, and challenging instead of passively receiving information from the instructor. My goal is to help students develop strong analytical reasoning, team spirit, and leadership mentality. In order to achieve this goal, I employ a mixture of cases, lectures, debates, games, and simulations. A hallmark of my teaching is that I strive to synergize my own research expertise and experience with class discussions, generating a mutually beneficial classroom interaction. My research theme around “strategic paradoxes” is seamlessly integrated into my course design. In doing this, I help equip students with not just foundational strategic frameworks but also frontier knowledge in strategy, organization theory, and entrepreneurship which are essential in solving real-world problems. I expect that students leave the classroom with the mentality to create shared value at the interface of business and society, and with skills and tools that will help them to be successful not just in their careers but also in their lives broadly.

Teaching Philosophy
Undergraduate Level
J375 Strategic Management
Strategy is the deliberate search for a plan of action that will develop a business’s competitive advantage and compound it. Competitive advantage often hinges upon the capability of assessing a situation, identifying alternative actions, and evaluating and selecting an optimal alternative for the specific context. Strategic decisions become less straightforward and more difficult to make when there are important tradeoffs presented by those alternatives—Strategic Paradoxes. As a manager, entrepreneur and leader, you often face conflicts and competing demands from various stakeholders, and contexts infused with strategic tensions. This course focuses on the formulation and implementation of organizational strategies across industries, markets, and societies where such tensions prevail. It aims to introduce you the foundational strategic frameworks as well as a portfolio of contemporary strategic tools, enabling you to understand the dynamics of a wide variety of business relationships and improve your ability to make those critical yet difficult strategic decisions.
Most recent instructor evaluation: 6.6/7.0
Course Syllabus
J375 Strategic Management Syllabus
MBA
J501 Developing Strategic Capabilities
Doctoral Level
W601 Theoretical and Historical Foundations of Organization Theory
Global Business Institute
Social Entrepreneurship
The Global Business Institute (GBI) is sponsored each summer by the U.S. State Department and The Coca-Cola Company Foundation. The Global Business Institute is an immersive program that brings a group of 100 students from participating countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Near Asia to the United States to learn about business in the context of America.
The GBI works with the embassies in each of the participating countries in a highly selective process to identify the program participants, as over 12,000 students applied for last year’s program. The culminating event of the program is that student teams present to a team of officials at the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C. their feasibility study of a business idea for launch in their home country.
I am a key faculty member of this program and responsible for teaching its social entrepreneurship component. By closely interacting with students in this multi-faceted, immersive program, I have had the opportunity to share with them the contemporary knowledge development in social entrepreneurship and emerging markets, while at the same time learn from them exciting changes happening in their home countries.