Tom Kwon
USC Marshall School of Business | PhD Candidate
My name is Tom Kwon, and I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Strategy at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California.
I am on the 2024-2025 job market. My Job Market Paper examines how firms adapt their technological trajectories in response to technology failures in the nascent autonomous vehicle (AV) industry.
For more information, please see my CV
CV
My research is at the intersection of technology management and industry emergence, examining how technology failure and managers’ temporal focus shape innovation trajectories in nascent industries. Specifically, I address the questions of (1) how do firms change and adapt their technological trajectories by learning from their own and others’ failures? and (2) how do managers’ temporal foci affect innovation and entrepreneurship in the early stages of industry evolution?
My dissertation was awarded the 2023 USC Marshall School of Business Ph.D. Fellowship and 2022 Will Mitchell Dissertation Research Grant (SRF Doctoral Grant). My JMP has been selected as the 2024 Best Conference Paper Finalist at the Strategic Management Society Annual Conference.
Awards & Grants
2024 Best Conference Paper Finalist, Strategic Management Society Annual Conference
2023 USC Marshall School of Business Ph.D. Fellowship - Best Dissertation ($10,000)
2023 USC Marshall School of Business Ph.D. Student Outstanding Teaching Award ($500)
2022 Will Mitchell Dissertation Research Grant, Strategy Research Foundation (SRF) ($10,000)
2022 USC Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies Best Ph.D. Student Research Award ($4,000)
Research Interests
Technology Management | Industry Emergence | Strategy Making Under Uncertainty | Temporal Orientation | Technology Entrepreneurship
Education
Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering
Technology Management
Seoul National University
M.S. in Electrical Engineering
Robotics, Signal Processing
Johns Hopkins University
B.S. in Electrical Engineering
Minor in Entrepreneurship & Management
Johns Hopkins University
Data
Narratives of Managers in Nascent Industries
Large-scale database of narrative information from various managerial levels in both private and public firms within nascent industries
Assessing Firm Strategies Using the Flow of Technological Knowledge
Large-scale database that assesses the flow of technological knowledge, connecting knowledge search - knowledge acquisition - knowledge output
Address
University of Southern California
Marshall School of Business
3670 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089