Tian Heong Chan | Emory University Goizueta Business School

Biography

Tian Chan completed his PhD in Management at INSEAD Business School, Fontainebleau, France (2016). Previously he was leading technology and operations development projects at PSA International. His research interests are new product development, design management, operational innovation, service management, and empirical operations.

Education

PhD in Technology and Operations Management

INSEAD
MS in Management Science and Engineering

Stanford University
BS in Mechanical Engineering

University of California, Berkeley

Innovation: Should it always be a team sport?

October 28, 2020

Conventional wisdom has it that innovation is very much a team sport. To create a breakthrough innovation that is vastly more successful than its predecessors, you need to prioritize teams over the individual.

Managing style and product design

July 30, 2018

Mobile phones look very different now than they did ten years ago. With access to all of the design patents available from the US Patent & Trademark Office (including ones from products in the telecommunications industry), Tian Heong Chan, assistant professor of information systems & operations management, and coauthors Jürgen Mihm (INSEAD) and Manuel E.

Most & Least Innovative States

WalletHub

March 23, 2022

How can state policymakers encourage and facilitate innovation? Innovation tends to have significantly positive geographical spillovers (meaning firms, institutions, or individuals at close locations benefit from frequent collaborations, sharing of ideas, etc.). So fostering/encouraging some kind of innovation hub (if none or few exist in the state) whereby such positive benefits of co-location can happen would be a good start. I also think that the presence of maker spaces or coding spaces where young kids can play and tinker with building products/software codes is useful to encourage innovation from a young age.

When Individuals Are More Innovative Than Teams

Harvard Business Review

December 31, 2019

"...However, our research has uncovered a factor that plays a key role in determining whether team outcomes will be superior to those of lone inventors: the structure of the invention — that is, the extent to which the invention can be broken down into separate components or 'modules.'"