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Sukhun Kang

Sukhun Kang

Assistant Professor of Technology Management
Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering, UC Santa Barbara

I study how technology shapes innovation and firm strategy, especially in the biopharmaceutical industry.

Before academia, I was a semiconductor engineer at Samsung and founded an Internet startup. I hold a PhD from London Business School and degrees in computer engineering from UIUC and USC. More about me

Selected research

All research

  • Working Paper

    Bridges or Barriers? How Venture Capital Portfolio Ties Shape Startups’ Market Entry

    with Sarath Balachandran & Sungyong Chang

    We examine how startups’ product market entry decisions are shaped by portfolio ties - connections to other startups backed by the same venture capital investor. We find that portfolio ties increase treated startups’ likelihood of new market entry on average, especially for startups located outside the major life-sciences hubs who have fewer alternative avenues for accessing market-specific expertise. However, this effect reverses when portfolio peers are near commercialization.

    • 2025 AOM Best Paper Proceedings
    • 2025 Sumantra Ghoshal Research and Practice Award
    • 2025 AOM STR's Distinguished Best Paper Award

    SSRN

  • Working Paper

    Data Privacy Regulation and Innovation

    with Jennifer Kao

    We investigate how data privacy regulations shape research and development (R&D). Leveraging firm-level variation in exposure to the GDPR, we find that the regulation lowers clinical trials by 18 percent.

    • 2026 AOM Best Paper Proceedings
    • 2026 Runner-up for ISA Babbage International Policy Forum Industrial Innovation Policy Award

    SSRN

  • Research Article

    Uncovering Seeding Trials: Examining Non-Scientific Purposes in Clinical Trials

    BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, 2026 · with Ivan Lin & Sungyong Chang

    Seeding trials are clinical studies that prioritise marketing over science while disguising this commercial purpose as legitimate research. We argue that seeding trials should be treated not as rare aberrations but as a recurring form of commercial bias within pharmaceutical research.

    Journal

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