Skip to main content

Amy Nguyen-Chyung

Assistant Teaching Professor

Dr. Amy Nguyen-Chyung joined Rady in 2018. She is responsible for instruction and curriculum development of the New Ventures Development and New Ventures Launch courses (formerly Lab-to-Market Workshop), in which teams launch new ventures or work with campus and community innovators. She has contributed towards evolving Rady’s capstone programs, enabling over 100 student teams to work with organizations to address challenging problems with innovative solutions – increasingly in impact-driven and cross-border areas.

Dr. Nguyen-Chyung is Co-Director of the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur, a collaboration between Rady and the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. She is also on the Faculty Committee advising the Sullivan Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and is Faculty Director of the Rady MicroMBA.

She received the Most Valuable Professor award from the FlexEvening 2021 MBA class, who took her Managerial Economics and Lab to Market Workshop courses (very different courses!). Prior to coming to Rady, she was Assistant Professor of Strategy at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, where she was nominated for the university-wide Golden Apple Teaching Award and the Weekend MBA Teaching Excellence Award. She has taught a broad range of entrepreneurship and strategy courses across Rady, Ross, Haas, and Wharton – all with elements of experiential learning. Most recently, she led Rady’s first global immersion to Vietnam in 2024.

Dr. Nguyen-Chyung’s research is in the area of entrepreneurship and strategy, investigating sources and consequences of heterogeneity in choices of entrepreneurial individuals and firms. She has earned a number of highly selective research awards and grants, including from the Kauffman Foundation, and is also an author of an award-winning case on Amazon in Emerging Markets; approximately 50,000 have been sold worldwide.

Dr. Nguyen-Chyung is also a Limited Partner of Next Wave Impact (an angel fund focused on generating diversity in high growth entrepreneurship and investing) and San Diego Angel Conference and has 15+ years of industry experience. Prior to academia, she worked in management consulting and international finance helping organizations to strategize or finance their growth – including for high tech, financial services, transportation, aerospace and defense, healthcare, consumer industry and government clients in NY, the Pacific Rim, S. America and Europe. At A.T.Kearney, where she earned the global Great Client Work Award, her clients ranged from Microsoft, Cardinal Health, and Raytheon, to Starbucks and BNP Paribas. She has also worked for the World Bank, Bankers Trust/BT Securities, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Dr. Nguyen-Chyung holds a PhD and MS in Business Administration (Business and Public Policy – business economics area) from U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School, a joint-MBA-MPA from Penn’s Wharton School and Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and an undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard.

Fun facts: She competes with the UCSD Okinawa Karate Competition Team and is a two-time National Champion in kata and kobudo (weapons) in her age and rank group. She was a member of the AAU National Karate Team that competed at the WUKF World Championship in 2022 (where she medaled in kobudo). She has visited all 50 states.

 

Selected Research

Published

Fišar, M., Greiner, B., Huber, C., Katok, E., Ozkes, A., and the Management Science Reproducibility Collaboration (December 2023). Reproducibility in Management Science. Management Science. Note: Member of the Management Science Reproducibility Collaboration.

Kauffman Dissertation Executive Summary: How Entrepreneurial Do You Choose to Be? Talent, Risk Attitudes, Overconfidence and Self-Selection into Entrepreneurship, 2014

Under review

Incentives for Attracting Talent (with O. Shelef)
Presented at AOM Vancouver, SMS Denver, People & Organizations Conference; presented by co-author at the National Bureau of Economic Research, SOIE, Harvard, Maryland, Univ. of Southern California, Utah and other venues.

Under revision

Why Some Entrepreneurs are more Entrepreneurial than Others: Talent, Risk Attitudes and Overconfidence
Recipient of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Dissertation Fellowship; Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division/National Federation of Independent Business Dissertation Award Finalist. Presented at Georgetown, Michigan, Smith Entrepreneurship Conference, SMU, Wharton and other venues

Follow the Sun: Value Chain Positioning in an Emerging Industry (with Y. Zhou and Yuxi Cheng)
Presented at AOM Atlanta; SMS Special Conference, Banff and the West Coast Research Symposium on Technology Entrepreneurship, Alberta; presented at the National University of Singapore, Santa Clara University, University of Southern California, University of Colorado at Boulder; presented by co-author at the Midwest Strategy Conference, London Business School and Wharton.

 

Published Teaching Material

Amazon in Emerging Markets Case (with E. Faulk) and Amazon in Emerging Markets Teaching Note, 2014, Updated 2019, Over 50,000 copies sold. Best-selling case (all-time #1 at WDI Publishing and a bestseller at HBS Publishing) has been taught at Marshall, Ross, Sauder, Wharton and many other schools. Case covers Amazon’s new ventures in India, China and Brazil competing with home-grown entrepreneurial startups. Economics, Politics and Business Environment Category Winner, The Case Centre Awards, 2018 (The awards “recognize worldwide excellence in case writing and teaching…presented to those outstanding cases that have been used in the largest number of organizations across the globe in the past year.”)

Chapter in McGraw Hill textbook, Cateora et al., eds., International Marketing, 19th edition, 2023.

Chapter in McGraw Hill textbook, Cateora et al., eds., International Marketing, 18th edition, 2019.

 

Professional/Invited Publications

Rady Business Journal Not another Buzzword Podcast Episode 2: How to Increase Your Success by Engineering Your Exit with Mark Bowles and host Dangerfield Moore, 2019.
• Not Another Buzzword is a student-run business podcast founded to explore topics with academic, business, and entrepreneurial leaders.

Kauffman State of the Field: Entrepreneurship – Institutions and Environment, archived here (with Y. Paik, A. Venâncio, and R. Louie), 2016. Also provided input on State of the Field: Entrepreneurship – Behavioral Determinants

The Future of Bay Area Jobs: The Impact of Offshoring and Other Key Trends (with A.T. Kearney team), 2004
• Project manager: led research team in 120 interviews (including semiconductor and software executives from start-ups to MNEs), analysis of 9,000 job listings and more to understand impact of global offshoring. Cosponsors: The Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Bay Area Economic Forum and Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network.
• Findings presented at Stanford University to 160 academic, business and policy leaders and multiple business and policy venues (2004-2005) and to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (testimony to the U.S. Congress) (2005). Press coverage: San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News

Offshoring: Accelerating and Here to Stay (with J. Ciacchella), The Supply Chain Connection, Newsletter of the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum, Vol. 10, Issue 4, 2004

Entrepreneurial Choice and Performance
Initial and Post-entry Positioning of Firms
Strategic Human Capital
Non-market Strategy