Amy Zhao-Ding’s research focuses on firms’ cognition and behavior in nascent markets and emerging fields, where game-changing technologies have enabled a wide range of entrepreneurial opportunities. In her dissertation, she studies mobile application developers and examines how they learn from their own and competitors’ experiences as well as customers’ feedback to identify opportunities. She introduces the concept of functionalities, which represent the purposes products can provide for customers. By connecting general-purpose technology with the demand environment, she proposes that firms navigate nascent markets as an uncertain and evolving functionality landscape. Broadly, Amy is interested in digital and cultural industries, she approaches teaching and research in entrepreneurship through the lens of organization theory.
Amy joined TUM School of Management as Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurial Management in October 2020. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Finance from Peking University in China and a master’s degree in Global Political Economy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. in Management with a specialization in Entrepreneurship from INSEAD and spent half a year at The Wharton School during her doctoral studies. She was a Strategy Research Foundation (SRF) Dissertation Scholar in the 2018-2020 cohort.
