SUN Tianshu

Dean’s Distinguished Chair Professor of Information Systems, Executive Academic Director for Business Scholars Program and Director of the Center for Digital Transformation, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB)

PhD, University of Maryland

tianshusun@ckgsb.edu.cn

Tianshu Sun 孙天澍 is a Dean’s Distinguished Chair Professor of Information Systems and Director of the Center for Digital Transformation at CKGSB. He has been tenured at USC Marshall School of Business, held a joint appointment in Computer Science and been recognized with Robert R. Dockson Named Professorship.

Tianshu’s research is focused on digital transformation, digital technology, digital platform, and digital economy. Tianshu’s research conducted in collaboration with leading private and public sector organizations addresses how firms and governments can combine data analytics, field experiment, causal inference, machine learning, and economic models to improve business decisions and industry policies. His current research aims to understand 1) the technology, organizational and strategy factors that drive successful digital transformation of enterprises and local economies, 2) how firms and government can facilitate and regulate the use of personal data in the digital economy; 3) how digital platforms can design data-driven interventions to influence social sharing; 4) how organizations can leverage mobile and internet-of-things to integrate E-commerce and offline retail.

Tianshu has worked closely with a variety of organizations including Facebook, Alibaba and Adobe. Many findings from these studies have been implemented by collaborating organizations.

Tianshu has given over 80 talks at top universities (Harvard, MIT, Wharton, Chicago, CMU, NYU, etc.) and international conferences, and has over a dozen research papers published in top journals such as Management Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, QME and Journal of Health Economics. Tianshu’s research has received 16 Best Paper Awards (ICIS, CIST, WITS, INFORMS), and served as the Associate Editors at ISR, Management Science and MISQ. Tianshu has developed a series of new courses on Digital Transformation, Big Data Analytics, and Digital Platforms and was honored with USC Golden Apple Award (for Best Professors).

Tianshu received his Bachelor in Physics from Nanjing University, and Master in Physics and PhD in Information Systems from University of Maryland.

• Digital Transformation
• Digital Platform Strategy
• Digital Technology (Cloud Computing, Big Data, SaaS/PaaS)
• Data Science & Data-driven Decision-Making (Causal Inference, Experiment, ML/AI)
• Digital Economy and Data Regulation
• Internet Platforms and Fintech
• Information Systems and Enterprise Software
• Omni-channel Retail, Manufacturing and Supply Chain

1. 1.Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Zhe Yuan, Chunxiao Li, Kaifu Zhang and Jun Xu. (2021) “The Value of Personal Data in Internet Commerce: A High-stake Field Experiment on Data Regulation Policy”, Forthcoming, Management Science
   — Invited Seminar at Harvard, MIT, Chicago, CMU, UCLA, Google, Uber etc. See a summary in a Review Paper with leading Economists and Nobel Laureates on Data Value, Data Privacy and Data Regulation.
2. 2.Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Siva Viswanathan and Elena Zheleva (2021) “Creating Social Contagion through Firm Mediated Message Design: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment”, Management Science, 67(2), 808-827.
3. 3.Brian Han, Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Leon Chu and Lixia Wu (2021) “COVID-19 and E-commerce Operations: Evidence from Alibaba”, Forthcoming, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
4. 4.Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Yanhao Max Wei, Joseph Golden (2021) “Geographical Pattern of Online Word-of-Mouth: How Offline Environment Affects Online Sharing”, Forthcoming, Information Systems Research
5. 5.Angela Choi, Heeseung Lee, Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Wonseok Oh (2021) “Reviewing Before Reading? An Empirical Investigation of Book Consumption Patterns and Their Effects on Reviews and Sales”, Forthcoming, Information Systems Research
6. 6.Tianshu Sun 孙天澍 and Sean Taylor (2020) “Displaying Things in Common to Encourage Friendship Formation: A Large Randomized Field Experiment”, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, 18, 237–271
   — Winner of QME Wittink Prize (Best Published Paper in 2020), Invited Talks at Facebook, LinkedIn, Snap, Wharton, CMU, also in ACM EC 2019 Proceeding
7. 7.Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Siva Viswanathan, Ni Huang and Elena Zheleva (2020) “Designing Promotional Incentive to Embrace Social Sharing: Evidence from Field and Online Experiments”, MIS Quarterly, 45(2), 789-820
8. 8.Edward McFowland III, Sandeep Gangarapu, Ravi Bapna and Tianshu Sun 孙天澍 (2020) “Optimal Utilization of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects: A Prescriptive Analytics Approach”, Forthcoming, MIS Quarterly
9. 9.Ni Huang, Probal Mojumder, Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Jinchi Lv, Joseph Golden (All contribute Equally) “Not Registered? Please Sign-up First: A Randomized Field Experiment on the Ex-ante Registration Request”, Information Systems Research, 32(3), 914-931
10. 10.JaeHwuen Jung, Ravi Bapna, Joseph Golden and Tianshu Sun 孙天澍 (2020) (All contribute equally) “Words Matter! Towards Pro-social Call-to-Action for Online Referral: Evidence from Two Field Experiments”, Information Systems Research, 31(1), 16-36
    — Knowledge@Wharton; Best Paper in E-Business, ICIS 2016
11. 11.Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Lanfei Shi, Siva Viswanathan and Elena Zheleva (2019) “Motivating Effective Mobile App Adoption: Evidence from a Large-Scale Randomized Field Experiment”, Information Systems Research, 30(2), 523-539.
12. 12.Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Guodong (Gordon) Gao and Ginger Zhe Jin (2019), “Mobile Messaging for Offline Group Formation in Prosocial Activities: A Large Field Experiment”, NBER Working Paper #21704, Management Science, 65(6), 2445-2945.
    — Best Paper (1st Place), CIST 2015; Best Paper (Honorable Mentions), INFORMS Doing Good with Good OR 2015;
13. 13.Ni Huang, Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Pei-yu Chen and Joseph Golden (2019) “Word-of-Mouth System Implementation and Customer Conversion: A Randomized Field Experiment”, Information Systems Research, 30(3), 805-818.
14. 14.Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Susan Feng Lu and Ginger Zhe Jin (2016), “Solving Shortage in a Priceless Market: Evidence from Blood Donation”, Journal of Health Economics, 48:149-165.
    — Featured on Nobel Laureate Al Roth’s blog, INET Winning Proposal 2013
15. 15.Mingxuan Yue, Tianshu Sun 孙天澍, Fan Wu, Lixia Wu, Yinghui Xu and Cyrus Shahabi (2020) “Learning Contextual and Topological Representations of Areas-of-Interest for On-Demand Delivery Application”, Proceedings of the 2020 European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML-PKDD 2020),
    — Best Applied Data Science Paper (Runner-up), ECML 2020