My research on creativity explores how individuals and teams generate, pitch, and evaluate novel ideas in uncertain and collaborative environments. I examine how ideas are communicated and integrated to shape the engagement and evaluation from early audiences, co-creators, and other stakeholders. By combining multi-method approaches across settings like Early Access video games, Hollywood film production, fashion co-branding, and human-AI co-evaluation in patent examinition, my work reveals the micro-foundations and team dynamics that influence how creative ideas are developed, sustained, and socially recognized. Ultimately, I aim to illuminate the mechanisms that foster creative momentum—and those that disrupt it—across time, teams, and cultures.

My research on proactivity investigates how individuals in teams shape their task, relationships, and meanings of work through self-initiated efforts—especially under pressure or uncertainty. I focus on how contextual forces such as competition, leadership orientation, and team dynamics influence when and how employees engage in job crafting and other proactive behavior. In one stream of work, I examine how moderate levels of inter-team competition foster proactive and adaptive job redesign, while excessive competition diminishes proactive energy. I also explore how specific leadership styles amplify or buffer these effects. My work contributes to a socially embedded view of proactivity, highlighting that even self-directed efforts are shaped by relational and structural cues. This research informs how organizations can calibrate pressure and leadership to enable sustainable, meaningful proactivity.

My research on leadership focuses on how leaders enable—or sometimes hinder—creative and proactive work within teams. One stream investigates the role of creative leaders in managing tensions and conflcts during collaborative projects. In a paper in-print at Academy of Management Journal, we explore how leaders and creative professionals navigate departures framed as "creative differences." In another stream, I examine how leadership orientation shapes employees' job crafting behaviors in high-pressure environments. Together, these studies illuminate the nuanced ways leaders shape the interpretation of conflict, collaboration, identity, and proactivity in creative and organizational contexts. They also offer practical guidance for designing leadership approaches that sustain innovation without suppressing autonomy.

Collaboration

I am deeply committed to phenomenon-driven research and practice-oriented teaching. While trained as a quantitative scholar, I actively engage in mixed-method projects, collaborating with experimentalists and qualitative researchers to unpack complex organizational dynamics. My work is grounded in real-world relevance—whether studying creative breakdowns in entrepreneurial teams or examining human-AI co-evaluation processes in patent systems. I bring this commitment to practice into the classroom as well, drawing on experience designing tailored leadership training programs for companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, and GSK. I also co-authored business cases on China's technology innovators (Case I: 3DMed: An R&D Platform for Personalised Precision Anti-cancer Drugs and Case II: Micro Platform, Major Innovation—WeChat-Based Ecosystem of Innovation), highlighting organizational agility and leadership for creativity and innovation in rapidly evolving markets. I welcome opportunities to collaborate with academic scholars and practitioners who share an interest in connecting rigorous research with pressing organizational challenges. If you are working on questions at the intersection of creativity, proactivity, leadership, and innovation (e.g., human-AI collaboration), I would be excited to explore how we might learn together.