Kenneth Huang

Associate Professor, Department of Strategy and Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School and the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management, NUS

Dr. Kenneth G. Huang is an associate professor at the Department of Strategy and Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, and Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management, NUS. He earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research and teaching focus on innovation and technology management; entrepreneurship and intellectual property strategy; open innovation; and science and technology policy, particularly in emerging economies like China and ASEAN. He has published in many top journals such as Science, Academy of Management Journal, Organisation Science, Research Policy, Nature Biotechnology and PNAS. He is also an award-winning educator at NUS.

Data room operators work at the headquarters of online shopping platform JD.com during the Singles' Day shopping festival in Beijing on 11 November 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP)
Society

72-hour workweek in China's tech companies: Driving innovation or destroying workers?

By Kenneth Huang 29 Jan 2021
News of young employees dying from overwork at major Chinese tech companies are not unheard of. Last December, a 22-year-old female employee at e-commerce giant Pinduoduo died after working long hours past midnight. China's intense efforts at increasing national competences in new and advanced technologies have seen it moving up the value chain from a low-cost manufacturer to an innovator in science and technology. But is the “996 culture” of working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week, feasible and sustainable?
Not all innovations are created equal; how can the right kind of innovation be encouraged and incentivised? (iStock)
Technology

An innovative China has overtaken the US in patent numbers?

By Kenneth Huang 06 Apr 2020
Associate professor Kenneth Huang from the NUS Business School observes that by 2012, China had overtaken the US in terms of the number of patents filed domestically. But this does not mean that all the innovations filed were truly novel or valuable. His recent study on Chinese state-owned enterprises shows that self-serving human factors are at play.