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Wen Wen

Associate Professor

Department:     Information, Risk & Operations Management

Industry Areas:     Software

Research Areas:     Artificial Intelligence, Entrepreneurship, Information Systems, Innovation & Institutions, Intellectual Property Rights, Venture Capital

Wen Wen

Wen Wen is an associate professor in the IROM department at the McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin. Professor Wen is an award-winning teacher and researcher in the areas of IT innovation, digital platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), and the future of work.

Combining econometrics and machine learning techniques, Professor Wen examines entrepreneurial innovations on digital platforms, and how they interact with institutional factors such as intellectual property system, venture capital, and standards-setting organizations. She has another major line of work that investigates the impact of digital innovations on customer interactions and the future of work, with an emphasis on issues around AI and cloud computing platforms. Her work offers important policy implications and has found an audience in the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Congress.

ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP & AWARDS

2024

Best Paper Award, Conference on Health IT and Analytics (CHITA)

2023

Information Systems Society Cluster Best Paper Award

2021

University of Texas at Austin McCombs Research Excellence Grant

2018

NET (Networks, Electronic Commerce, and Telecommunications) Institute Grant (2014, 2016, 2018)

2015

Best Paper Award, Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE)

2014

The Sloan Foundation Grant on the Economics of Knowledge Contribution and Distribution

Haoyuan Liu, Wen Wen, Andrew B. Whinston, and Stephen He. Peer Influence in the Workplace: Evidence from an Enterprise Digital Platform. MIS Quarterly.  Forthcoming.

Haoyuan Liu, Wen Wen, Anitesh Barua, and Andrew B. Whinston.
Making Lemonade from Lemons: A TCE Perspective on Third-party Disruptions in a Multi-vendor IT Service.
Information Systems Research.  Forthcoming.

The Effects of Technology Standards on Complementor Innovations: Evidence from the IETF. Wen Wen, Chris Forman, Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa. Research Policy.  July 2022, Vol. 51(6): 104518.

Samuel Bond, Stephen He, and Wen Wen. 2019. Speaking for “Free”: Word of Mouth in Free- and Paid- Product Settings. Journal of Marketing Research 56(2), 276-290.

Wen Wen and Feng Zhu. 2019. Threat of Platform-Owner Entry and Complementor Responses: Evidence from the Mobile App Market. Strategic Management Journal 40(9), 1336-1367.

Dan Breznitz, Chris Forman, and Wen Wen. 2018. The Role of Venture Capital in the Formation of a New Technological Ecosystem: Evidence from the Cloud. MIS Quarterly 42(4), 1143-1169.

Wen Wen and Chris Forman. 2016. Do Patent Commons and Standards-Setting Organizations Help Navigate Patent Thickets? Communications of the ACM 59(5), 42-43.

Wen Wen, Marco Ceccagnoli, and Chris Forman. 2016. Opening Up Intellectual Property Strategy: Implications for Open Source Software Entry by Start-up Firms. Management Science 62(9), 2668-2691.

Wen Wen, Chris Forman, and Stuart J. H. Graham. 2013. The Impact of Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement on Open Source Software Project Success. Information Systems Research 24(4), 1131-1146.