Yanuo Zhou

I am a doctoral candidate in Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, and a PhD Fellow at the Lab for the Management of Science and Technology (L-MOST). Prior to my doctoral studies, I was a Research Associate at Harvard Business School.

I study how the proliferation of artificial intelligence and digitization reshapes firms, industries, and competitive strategy. My recent work explores how AI producers’ design and fine-tuning decisions embed specific values and trade-offs into their products, which in turn has implications for downstream adopters and AI policy.

This inquiry is part of my broader interest in quantifying the economic value of foundational digital technologies. I also study how digital public goods, such as open source software, create immense but often hidden value that underpins the modern innovation economy. Across all my projects, I apply large-scale quantitative methods to novel datasets.

Education:

PhD in Strategic Management, 2022 – Present
University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management

M.A. in Social Sciences, 2018 – 2021
University of Chicago


Certificate in Data Science, 2019 -2020
Northwestern University

B.S. in Business and Agricultural Economics, 2014 – 2018
University of California, Davis