INSEAD has invited Professor Peter Ping Li to give a speech at their Asian Campus

INSEAD Asian Campus invited Dr. Peter Ping Li, Asia Research Center, Department of International Economics and Management at CBS to present on the topic of "Exploration and Exploitation as the Yin-Yang Balancing: Theory and Evidence".

The seminar took place on April 15, 2011, INSEAD Asian Campus in Singapore Campus, from 12:30 to 13:30 in G. Sauvage Conference Room.

Abstract:

As the core of Chinese traditional wisdom, the cognitive frame of Yin-Yang Balancing is critical to reversing the fragmented, static and dichotomist trends in the mainstream research in the West driven primarily by Aristotle’s formal logic of “either/or” and secondarily by Hegel’s dialectical logic of “both/or”. The Yin-Yang Balancing offers the third option of “either/and” as a holistic and dynamic duality (with two opposites being both contrary and complementary as the opposites-in-unity). In this study, I apply the Yin-Yang Balancing to the debate over how to balance exploration with exploitation as the means for the goals of radical and incremental innovations. Specifically, beyond accepting the assumed linear links between exploitation and incremental innovation as well as between exploration and radical innovation, I propose two novel curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) links between the two opposite pairs (exploitation-radical link and exploration-incremental link). The two curvilinear links suggest the duality nature of exploitation and exploration as both a tradeoff and a synergy to different degrees at different places or at different times. Based upon a large sample of 508 Chinese firms, the empirical evidence supports the hypotheses. The critical implications for future research and practice are also discussed.

In addition, Dr. Peter Ping Li delivered a lecture to the MBA students at INSEAD as a guest speaker in the course of China Strategy on April 16, 2011.

Dr. Li stayed for a week on INSEAD Asian Campus with an extensive exchange of research ideas with many faculty members at INSEAD Asian Campus. He will be invited to visit them again in the near future as a regular visiting professor.

During his stay in Singapore, Dr. Li was invited to present at National University of Singapore on the topic of “Disruptive Innovation at the Bottom of the Pyramid.”