Wharton Innovation Doctoral Symposium

The Wharton Innovation Doctoral Symposium (WINDS) is the Wharton School’s student-run multi-disciplinary doctoral conference on innovation.

The rationale behind WINDS is that innovation, a central theme in business research and a fundamental driver in today’s economy, is by its very nature multi-disciplinary. However, as of today, there is no platform where doctoral students from different business-related disciplines — such as strategic management, organizational theory, finance, accounting, operations, marketing, economics, and other areas — can interact. WINDS intends to provide such a multi-disciplinary meeting point.

This event, now occurring annually in March, is organized by the Mack Innovation Doctoral Association and supported by the Mack Institute, the Wharton Doctoral Office, and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly of University of Pennsylvania.

If you have any questions, please email the organizing committee at windsteam@wharton.upenn.edu.

Read more about the founding of WINDS here.

Student Organizing Committee

Jaeho Kim is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Management Department at the Wharton School. He conducts research on strategies for fostering technological innovation by entrepreneurial individuals, firms, and ecosystems. His present work addresses startups’ innovation teams and investigates how the team composition of talents and tech-based knowledge affects the subsequent innovation performance of individual members of the team.

Aparajita is a fourth year doctoral student in the Management Department at Wharton with research interests at the intersection of innovation, economic development and entrepreneurship. Prior to joining Wharton, Aparajita worked in multiple consulting, strategy and product management roles in multi-national organizations in India and UK.

Brittany Mallory is a third-year Ph.D. student in management, specializing in strategic human capital. She studies how firms navigate the external labor market to hire workers and the consequences of mobility to workers’ careers. She is especially interested in how these questions intersect with startups as they scale and change organizational size and form. Prior to beginning doctoral work, Brittany worked in marketing research and as a research assistant studying coworking spaces and human capital mobility. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Xinyu Ma is a doctoral student in the Operations, Information and Decisions Department of the Wharton School, with a concentration in information systems and technology. His research interests lie in digital transformation, technology strategy, and innovation. Xinyu is also passionate about applying natural language processing methods to large-scale text data to measure economic variables and derive business insights.

Sathya is a 4th year doctoral student in the Management Department with a focus on corporate and non-market strategy. In particular, his research interests range from mergers and acquisitions in innovative contexts to how social movements impact corporate policy. Prior to beginning doctoral work, Sathya worked for 7 years on management consulting and corporate social responsibility engagements. He previously earned an MBA from the University of Michigan and a BS from the University of North Carolina.

Sixth Annual Wharton Innovation Doctoral Symposium

Conference Dates: March 3 & 4, 2023

Application Deadline: Saturday, December 24, 2022

This event will be held in person