Andy Wu

Overview

How can technology entrepreneurs build competitive advantage from the ground up? Professor Andy Wu conducts scholarly research and develops course materials that document how technology entrepreneurs can (1) organize for innovation to create new market opportunities and (2) mobilize resources to achieve scale. These two considerations distinguish entrepreneurial strategy from incumbent strategy in technology. To intimately understand the practice and consequences of these actions for technology entrepreneurs, Professor Wu uses a variety of empirical methods: archival data, field experiments, laboratory experiments, and qualitative interviews.

Entrepreneurs have a unique organizational ability to create value through innovation because they lack scale, but they need to resort to unconventional methods to persuade investors and complementors to join and enable them to build scale and capture that value. First, entrepreneurial firms have a unique ability to innovate despite, and often because of, their lack of scale: they are able to reconfigure their organizations on the dimensions of structure, time, and space—in short, to innovate rapidly and efficiently. For instance, flat entrepreneurial organizations can easily alter how they coordinate and thus swap between generating usefulness and novelty, the two necessary components of innovation. Second, technology entrepreneurs face a unique challenge in acquiring external resources needed to scale. Entrepreneurs without scale can communicate the potential of scale to investors and complementors, and they can select for parties that favorably perceive that potential. These two streams reflect the lifecycle of strategies for the technology entrepreneur: first, how the very nascent entrepreneur can innovate without scale; second, how the entrepreneur can get the resources to build a scale advantage around that innovation.

Professor Wu’s interest in this topic stems from his experience as an entrepreneur and inventor predating my own academic career. His family immigrated to the United States for the dynamism around technology and entrepreneurship, representing what the best of the American Dream. Since his youth, he helped his family in software ventures and even restaurants. On his own, he launched a (still growing) venture to bring cutting-edge drone and cloud-based big data technology to the industrial sector.

Keywords: Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Growth Management; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Technology Platform; Technological Innovation; Information Technology Industry; Retail Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Video Game Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States; China; Southeast Asia; South Asia

Leading Professional Service Firms

As entry barriers rapidly disappear, competition is accelerating and reshaping the business landscape for professional service firms. Navigating this continual change successfully requires extraordinary leadership abilities. This professional service firm management program provides the frameworks you need to develop and retain talent, deliver outstanding client service, and build a flexible corporate culture that can exploit disruptive innovation and market trends.

Related Link: https://www.exed.hbs.edu/leading-professional-service-firms/

Senior Executive Leadership Program—Middle East

Change is everywhere in the Middle East today, as many countries seek to diversify their economies and encourage new industries. The region's complex business environment includes distinct political and economic conditions in each country—and an uncertain global economy. That's why businesses seeking the best opportunities for growth in the region need exceptional leaders—executives who are bold decision-makers, global thinkers, and skilled strategists.

Taught in a series of modules offered in Boston and Dubai, this business management program will help you become a stronger leader who can deliver value in a global context, drive new levels of innovation, and build accountable, high-performance organizations.

Related Link: https://www.exed.hbs.edu/senior-executive-leadership-program-middle-east/

Real Estate Management Program: Finance, Design, and Leadership

How do you achieve short-term stability and long-term growth in the unpredictable real estate marketplace? This program explores how forward-thinking real estate leaders are positioning their firms to seize growth opportunities and maximize asset value. Equipped with new strategies for enhancing operational efficiency, navigating market change, and unlocking new sources of capital, you will be ready to help your company compete more successfully in an increasingly complex industry.

Related Link: https://www.exed.hbs.edu/real-estate-management-program/

Competing in the Age of Digital Platforms

Without exception, the most valuable companies in the world today are platforms: Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and many other firms have built their fortunes by facilitating innovation across global ecosystems or enabling the broad exchange of goods and services. There are different paths to success in the digital world, whether a company wants to compete as a new platform or to leverage an existing platform for competitive advantage. This program will show you how to create sustainable value whether you are competing as, with, or against digital platforms.

Related Link: https://www.exed.hbs.edu/competing-age-digital-platforms/

Strategy: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage

In the fight for market leadership, your company must be able to build a winning strategy—and execute it seamlessly across multiple business lines. This program prepares you to identify and exploit sources of competitive advantage and implement game-changing action plans. You will develop the analytical skills and leadership vision to forecast industry trends, outmaneuver the competition, and sustain corporate success as the global economy evolves.

Related Link: https://www.exed.hbs.edu/strategy-building-sustaining-competitive-advantage/curriculum

Strategy and Technology

The Strategy and Technology elective course explores the unique aspects of creating effective strategies for technology-intensive businesses.

• What strategies win in markets with network effects?
• How can technology be leveraged to build multisided platforms?
• How can firms create and capture the value from intellectual property?
• What are the unique challenges of governing technology-intensive firms?
• How can firms build and sustain value in new, emerging technologies?

The course provides a series of concepts and frameworks for students to directly
apply to strategic problems they will encounter as managers and executives. The
course places heavy emphasis on going from concepts and market analysis to the
formulation of concrete strategies. The types of firms range from pre-revenue
startups to large multinationals.

INDUSTRY COVERAGE   
Industries covered range widely, including: enterprise
software, cloud services, e-commerce, social networking, video gaming, browsers,
semiconductors, operating systems, PCs, media streaming, intellectual property,
mobile communications, electronic ink, artificial intelligence,
blockchain/cryptocurrency, internet of things, and wearable technology.

CAREER FOCUS    
The course should be of particular interest to those interested in
managing a business for which technology is likely to play a major role, and to
those interested in consulting, private equity, or venture capital. The course may
also be valuable for students who do not necessarily plan to pursue a career
specifically in technology. The concepts and frameworks covered apply well
beyond technology industries, e.g., network effects, competitive tactics, multisided
platforms.

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Patents; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Hardware; Information Technology; Internet; Mobile Technology; Online Technology; Search Technology; Software; Technology Adoption; Technology Networks; Technology Platform

Syllabus

Included as one of the “Best 40 Under 40 Business Professors” by Poets & Quants in 2019.

Winner of the 2018 Wyss Award for Excellence in Doctoral Student Mentoring.

Recipient of the 2018 Charles M. Williams Award for Teaching Excellence.

Received Honorable Mention for the 2018 Best Conference Paper Prize from the Strategic Management Society with Sourobh Ghosh for "Iterative Coordination and Innovation" (HBS Working Paper, No. 20-121, January 2020).

Awarded the 2018 PhD Paper Prize from the Strategic Management Society Annual Conference with Sourobh Ghosh for "Iterative Coordination and Innovation" (HBS Working Paper, No. 20-121, January 2020).

Winner of the 2018 Best Conference Paper Award from the Behavioral Strategy Interest Group of the Strategic Management Society with Sourobh Ghosh for "Iterative Coordination and Innovation" (HBS Working Paper, No. 20-121, January 2020).

Winner of the 2018 European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS) Andreas Al-Laham Best Paper Award with Shelby Gai and J. Yo-Jud Cheng for “Intra-Organizational Brokerage Ability and Motivation: Inter-Board-Committee Coordination after Peer Restatement Events.”

Winner of the 2017 Industry Studies Association Best Paper in Innovation and Entrepreneurship with Jiamin Zhang for "Entrepreneurial Access to Market and Non-Market Resources: Chinese Venture Capital and High-Speed Rail."

Finalist for the 2017 Wiley Blackwell Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management for “Organizational Resource Assembly in Technology Ventures” (The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, 2016).

Finalist for the 2017 Heizer Dissertation Award in New Enterprise Development from the Academy of Management for “Organizational Resource Assembly in Technology Ventures” (The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, 2016).

Selected as a 2017-2018 Batten Fellow at the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Darden School of Business, University of Virginia.

Finalist for the 2017 Best Dissertation Award from Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management.

Winner of the 2016 Robert J. Litschert Award from the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management for the best paper authored by a doctoral student.

Received Honorable Mention for the 2016 William H. Newman Award from the Academy of Management for outstanding papers based on a recent dissertation.

“Organizational Decision-Making and Information: Angel Investments by Venture Capital Partners” was selected in 2016 for publication in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings.

Winner of the 2016 Dr. Andy Binns Award for Outstanding Service to Graduate and Professional Student Life at the University of Pennsylvania.

Finalist for the 2015 Best Conference Paper Prize from the Strategic Management Society.

Received a Kauffman Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in 2015.

Winner of Social Enterprise at Goizueta Research Colloquium Best Paper in 2015.

Received a 2015 Russell Ackoff Doctoral Student Fellowship at the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center.

Received a 2015 INSEAD-Wharton Center for Global Research and Education Grant.

Winner of the 2014 Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students, University of Pennsylvania.

Winner of a 2014 President Gutmann Leadership Award, Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, University of Pennsylvania.

Received a 2014 Wharton Doctoral Travel Grant.

Received Mack Institute for Innovation Management Research Grants from 2012 to 2016 at the Wharton School.

Received Honorable Mention for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 2011.

Received a 2011 Wharton Doctoral Fellowship.

Selected as a 2010 MIT Burchard Scholar.