About the Event
Join Xiaolan Fu, Professor of Technology and International Development at the University of Oxford, and George S. Yip, a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Northeastern University, as they investigate the rise of “superapps” in China, using the popular app WeChat as a case study.
About Xiaolan Fu and George S. Yip
Xiaolan Fu (傅晓岚) is the Founding Director of the Technology and Management Centre for Development (TMCD), Professor of Technology and International Development, Fellow of Green Templeton College and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Founder of OxValue.AI. She was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to the Ten-Member High Level Advisory Group of the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism and to the Governing Council of the UN's Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries. She is also a member of the UN SDSN Leadership Council led by Jeffrey Sachs.
Xiaolan's research interests include innovation, technology and industrialisation; trade, foreign direct investment and economic development; emerging Asian economies; innovation and productivity in the UK/US. She has published extensively in leading international journals independently or in collaboration with others. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, and serves on the editorial boards of Industrial and Corporate Change, International Journal of Technology Management, and four other international journals.
Professor Fu came to Oxford from Cambridge University, where she was a Senior Research Fellow. Before coming to the UK, she had five years' work experience in the business sector in China before embarking on her academic career.
George S. Yip is a Distinguished Visiting Professor and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for Emerging Markets, Northeastern University, and Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Strategy at Imperial College Business School, London. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Total Global Strategy, published in 11 languages (Prentice-Hall, 1992), co-author of two books on China innovation (The MIT Press, 2016 and 2019, both with Chinese editions by CITIC Press), and numerous articles on Chinese innovation and management, including Harvard Business Review (2021 and 2023), MIT Sloan Management Review (2019), and Asia Pacific Journal of Management (2021).
George's previous academic positions include Professor of Strategy and Co-Director of the Centre on China Innovation at China Europe International Business School, Harvard, Georgetown (visiting), UCLA, Stanford (visiting), Oxford (visiting), Cambridge, London Business School, and Rotterdam School of Management. Previous business positions include Vice President and Director of Research & Innovation at Capgemini Consulting, senior manager at Price Waterhouse (USA), manager at Unilever, and various boards.
He holds a BA and MA in Economics and Law from the University of Cambridge; and an MBA and DBA from Harvard Business School.
About the Nardone Family Seminar Series
Made possible by a gift from David R. Nardone, this seminar series brings scholars and practitioners to Northeastern University to share insights on emerging markets.