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Asia Center of Management Science and Engineering

Asia Center is dedicated to research and education that impacts economic, environmental and social development in Asian countries.

At Asia Center, we believe that regional development of a country must be synergistic to its cultural heritage and political and social environment.

Mission

To accomplish our mission of developing innovative economic and social solutions by combining theories and best practices that can be implemented in Asian countries, we are initially focusing our research on understanding the most influential country in Asia — China.

China has emerged as one of the most important economic powers in the world. It plays a leading role in the economic development of Asia. China has provided many opportunities and challenges for its neighbors as it has strived to establish closer trade and economic links with neighboring countries and the world at large. Many countries in Asia are eager to build their economic relationship with China to further their economic development. In the past 30 years, China has grown from an underdeveloped country into the second-largest economy in the world. Today, China is the world’s largest exporter and importer and the largest holder of foreign exchange reserves. In the next 10 years, China will face many challenging economic and social transformations. These transformations will move its economy into a new phase through steady technological innovation and an explosion of domestic demand. China will play an important role as a major market and capital resource for Asia’s economic growth.

Asia Center’s agenda is to study how China negotiates economic and social transformations in ways that are synergistic with its cultural, political and social environment. The center offers a venue in which researchers from different Asian countries can interact and develop insights into issues of economic development in Asia.

Research focus

Asia Center directs its research focus on different aspects of economic and social transformation in China that in turn will influence Asia’s economic development:

  • Transformation from a production economy to an innovation economy
  • Development of an innovation ecosystem
  • Industrial parks transformation
  • Urban and rural co-development
  • Health care reform
  • Development of the retirement community
  • Financial system
  • Energy and environmental systems
  • Use of information technology in developing smart cities

Programs

The center hosts:

  • Conferences
  • Workshops
  • Visiting researcher program
  • Executive education

Director

Asia Center director: Edison Tse; mail: etse@stanford.edu

Faculty members and their research areas

  • Margaret Brandeau — health care and health service systems
  • Chuck Eesley — entrepreneurship and science park development
  • Alain Enthoven — health care reform and the retirement community
  • Kay Giescke — financial system
  • Pamela Hinds — relationship between culture and technology use
  • James Sweeney — energy efficiency and alternate energy
  • Edison Tse — China innovation and transformation, development of an innovation ecosystem
  • John Weyant — environmental policy
  • Yinyu Ye — big data and smart cities

PhD students' research

Daniel Armanios is an MS&E fourth-year PhD student working with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, where he conducts his research as a joint Stanford-NSF Graduate Research Fellow. His research focuses on institutional infrastructure, namely local provincial governments and public-private institutions, and their role on entrepreneurship and venture performance. His most recent working paper compares the role of science parks with the role of government ties on venture resource acquisition and on venture performance.

Hannan Fan is an MS&E PhD student whose research focuses on designing and building innovative business models for the health care system, with an emphasis on supporting the future elderly population in China. Through bringing in medical, economic, social and cultural elements, she is exploring ways to build an ecosystem for senior living communities, to provide total health care and to promote both physical and mental health for the elderly population in China. This research has the potential to be directly applied in many different societies, with an overall goal of trying to provide a solution for the widespread aging demographics problem, which already is emerging or is about to emerge in many parts of the world.

Wesley Koo is an MS&E PhD student working with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. His research interest in China and Japan resides in the phenomenon of business groups and their relationship with entrepreneurship. His most recent project focused on how market reforms in China affect venture formation. Wesley holds two bachelor’s degrees in Environmental Engineering and Finance from MIT. Prior to joining Stanford, he worked at an energy start-up in western China. Wesley speaks Chinese and Japanese.

June Lee focuses her research on understanding how companies maintain a strong strategic position to be innovative and entrepreneurial in competitive markets, and what role public policy plays in different regional settings. While many previous studies focus on how innovative industry leaders such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Walmart have succeeded, she is focusing on understanding why some of these players fail in certain geographic regions, especially in Asia. By taking a hard look at different industries, she plans to draw similarities and differences in their business models. She believes that during the internationalization process, factors such as entrance strategies, cultural discrimination and respective country’s public policies that are geared toward protecting their domestic industries all play important roles. She is positive that this relatively unexplored area will contribute to existing innovation paths literature as a foundation and inspiration for developing Asian countries.