Grace Gu
About Me
Ph.D.: Harvard Business School
Current Position: Assistant Professor, USC Marshall School of Business
Welcome! I am Grace Gu, and I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business. My research interests lie in the intersection of technological innovation and strategic management, with a focus on platform strategies in the IT industry. I received my doctorate in Technology and Operations Management from Harvard Business School.
One theme of my research examines disintermediation in online marketplaces, where customers and service providers circumvent the intermediary to transact directly. This stream of my research identifies various key factors that affect disintermediation, such as user trust and technological change. My other work also studies firm strategic decisions and technological competition, particularly in online digital marketplaces such as the mobile App platforms, Wikipedia, and the video game industry.
Research Interests
Technology Strategies, Digitization and Innovation, Platform Markets
Publications
Grace Gu. 2022. “Technology and Disintermediation in Online Marketplaces.” Management Science, forthcoming.
Grace Gu and Feng Zhu, 2021. “Trust and Disintermediation: Evidence from an Online Freelance Marketplace,” Management Science, 67(2): 794–807.
“Ideology and Composition among an Online Crowd: Evidence from Wikipedians,” with Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu. 2021. Management Science, 67(5): 3067-3086.
Working Papers
“Technology Fragmentation, Platform Investment, and Complementary Innovation,” with Zhuoxin Allen Li. Under review.
“Disintermediation Governance and Complementor Innovation: An Empirical Look at Amazon.com,” with Xia Han and Gaoyang Cai. Under revision.
“Fostering Long-tenured Seller Value-Creation Using a Simple Badge: A Field Experiment and Policy Evaluatiom on an Online Marketplace,” with Yitong Wang, Zhe Yuan, and Lu Fang. Under review.
Awards & Honors
Management Science IS Best Paper Award. Winner. 2023.
Best Paper Award, INFORMS Annual Meeting E-Business Cluster. Winner. 2023.
SMS Competitive Strategy IG Best Proposal Award for Rigor, Strategic Management Society (SMS) Annual Conference. Finalist. 2023.
Distinguished Reviewer Award, Management Science. Recipient. 2022-2023, 2021-2022, 2020-2021.
Strategic Management Society (SMS) Strategy Research Foundation Dissertation Scholar Award. Recipient. 2017-2019.
Best Conference PhD Paper Award, Strategic Management Society (SMS) Annual Conference. Winner. 2017.
TIM Best Student Paper Award, Academy of Management (AoM) Annual Meeting. Runner-up. 2018.
Best Paper Award, International Conference on Information System (ICIS), Workshop on E-Business. Runner-up. 2017.
Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching Award from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University. 2017.
Contact
Grace Gu
USC Marshall School of Business
3670 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089
gracegu at marshall dot usc dot edu