Product Management Interview Handbook

Edison Tse is an associate professor in the Department of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. He received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Tse is also the Director of Asia Center of Management Science and Engineering, which has the charter of developing executive training programs for executives in Asian enterprises, conducting research on development of the emerging economy in Asia and establishing research affiliations with Asian enterprises, with a special focus in Greater China: China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

In 1973, he received the prestigious Donald Eckman Award from the American Automatic Control Council in recognition of his outstanding contribution in the field of Automatic Control. He had served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions of Automatic Control, and a co-editor of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, which he co-founded.

Professor Tse has done research in system and control engineering, economic dynamics and control, computer integrated systems to support fishery management policy decisions, management and control of manufacturing enterprise, and industrial competitive analysis and product development. Tse developed a framework for analyzing dynamic competitive strategy that would shape the formation of an ecosystem supporting a value proposition. Within such a framework, he developed dynamic strategies for firms entering an emerging market, latecomers entering a matured market, and firms managing transformation. Using this framework, he developed a new theory on the business transformation of a company and the economic transformation of a developing economy. He applied his theory to explain China’s rapid growth since 1978, changing from a production economy to an innovation economy. His current research is extending the theory to managing product success, managing inflection point disruptions, sustainable growth strategy in a dynamic changing environment, and industries’ strategy responding to geopolitics disruption. Over the years he has made valuable contributions in the field of engineering, economics, and business creation and expansion. He has published over 180 papers on his research activities.

From 2004- 2015, he co-directed various Stanford-China programs on regional industry and enterprise transformation that were attended by high level city officials from various cities in China and high level executives from Chinese enterprises. Based on his research and teaching experiences in China, he wrote a book in Chinese “源创新 (Disruptive Innovation)” based on this theory and published in China in 2012. A second edition of this book, with new chapters incorporating some experiences of practicing the theory in China, was published in 2016 by China CITIC Press with a new title “重新定义创新(Redefine Innovation)”. From 2007-2013, he co-directed a Stanford Financial Engineering Certificate Program in Hong Kong that upgrades the quality of managers and traders in the financial institutions in Hong Kong

He was a co-founder and a Board member of Advanced Decision System (ADS), a technology company with emphasis on AI and advanced decision tools. The company was found in 1979 and later acquired by Booz Allen and Hamilton in 1991. In 1988, Verity was spun off from ADS with AI search engine technology developed in ADS to provide enterprise search software. He was a Board member of Verity representing ADS before Verity went IPO in 1995. From 2007-2010, he was a Board member of KBC Fund Management Co., Ltd.