Jay Inghwee Chok, PhD

Dr. Chok, received his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Southern California (USC) and joined academia after several years of professional experience working in a variety of organizations outside the United States. A significant part of his employment experience was developed in varied institutional contexts across transnational organizations such as the World Bank Group and ExxonMobil, and across large government agencies such as the military and the Treasury (the Singapore Ministries of Finance and Defense). Dr. Chok has also held research positions at three very different educational institutions (INSEAD, the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and USC Marshall) before teaching at KGI. This cross-cultural, international perspective has been invaluable to Dr. Chok’s teaching for the International Business course, the cross-border case studies he utilized in the Alliance Management course, as well as the “Digital Innovation in Healthcare” course.

Since coming to KGI in July 2011 as a core faculty of the Keck Graduate Institute, Dr. Chok has also served as a TMP faculty advisor on a broad range of business research projects. The projects that Dr. Chok has worked on are sponsored not only by life science companies but also companies with commercial interests in the broader health sector. These companies span varied geographies and include Tecan, Yumei Hospital, Aochi Biotech, Eli Lilly and Company, Gilead Sciences, Amgen Inc, Atara Biotherapeutics, 3M Healthcare, and Merck & Co.

Dr. Chok has two interdisciplinary research programs. In the “Creative Destruction of Medicine”, he explored the various components of health systems sciences (e.g., biotech companies, capital markets, digital health, and etc). In his study of “Chinese Entrepreneurship”, he does his best to adopt an indigenous research lens informed by (and beyond) his identity and racial roots, as a person of Singaporean ethnicity, a descendant of Chinese immigrants during the 2nd Sino-Japanese war era, and the father of two Singaporean Americans. To equitably study these phenomena inclusively with some attention to epistemic justice and diversity, Dr. Chok has recently begun to think about how the intersection of advantage-seeking and opportunity-seeking might operate as multi-level processes in these two interdisciplinary areas. As students of the Claremont Colleges (and KGI in particular), if you are interested in carrying out these conversations in a manner that is relevant to our society, please feel free to reach out.

Among the various academia-related service that Dr. Chok perform, the most consequential, wide-ranging role is the Accreditation Liaison Officer (Faculty ALO). Dr Chok assumed the faculty ALO position in May 2021. With some self-deprecating humor, Dr. Chok likens his role to something like an “infrastructure worker”, bridging KGI with WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) to foster a collaborative, value-adding relationship between university and institutional accreditor.

PEER-REVIEW ARTICLES

Roosan, D., Chok, J.I, Baskys, A., & Roosan, M. R. (2022). PGxKnow: a pharmacogenomics educational HoloLens application of augmented reality and artificial intelligence. Pharmacogenomics, 23(4), 235-245.

Roosan, D., Tatla, V., Li, Y., Kugler, A., Chok, J.I, & Roosan, M. R. (2022). Framework to Enable Pharmacist Access to Healthcare Data Using Blockchain Technology and Artificial Intelligence. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association.

Roosan, D., Chok, J.I, Karim, M., Law, A. V., Baskys, A., Hwang, A., & Roosan, M. R., (2020). “Artificial Intelligence–Powered Smartphone App to Facilitate Medication Adherence: Protocol for a Human Factors Design Study”, JMIR Research Protocols, 9(11), e21659.

Roosan, D., Hwang, A., Law, A. V., Chok, J.I, & Roosan, M. R., (2020). “The inclusion of health data standards in the implementation of pharmacogenomics systems: a scoping review”, Pharmacogenomics, 21(16), 1191-1202.

Wang, Z., Ling, J., & Chok, J. I., (2020). “Relational embeddedness and disruptive innovations: The mediating role of absorptive capacity”, Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 57, 101587. (Equal first authors arrayed in reverse alphabetical order)

Dai, Y., Byun, G., Chok, J.I. & Ding, F., (2019). “Learning from Referents across Geographic Distance and Institutional Contexts: The Perceived Speed of ISO 9000 Certification in Chinese High-Technology New Ventures”, Journal of Small Business Management, 57(2), 400-420

Roosan, D., Li, Y., Law, A., Truong, H., Karim, M., Chok, J.I., & Roosan, M., (2019). “Improving medication information presentation through interactive visualization in mobile apps”, JMIR mHealth and uHealth , 7(11), e15940

Zheng, C. and Chok, J. I., (2018). “Institutional Contradictions and Community Emergence – An Examination of Institutional Entrepreneurship in the Popular Music Industries Context”, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 20(1), 50-64

Dai, Y., Roundy , P.T., Chok, J.I., Ding, F & Byun, G., (2016). “Who knows what? in new venture teams: Transactive memory systems as a micro-foundation of entrepreneurial orientation”, Journal of Management Studies, 53(8)

Chok, J.I., (2014). “The creation of a not-for-profit industry: homelessness as a manufactured phenomenon”, Business Studies Journal, 6(1)

Chok, J.I., & Qian, J., (2013). “Comparable stocks, boundedly rational stock markets and IPO entry”, PLOS ONE, 8(5), e61474

Chok, J.I., & Qian, J., (2013). “Do executives’ backgrounds matter to IPO investors? Evidence from the life science industry”, PLOS ONE, 8(5), e60911

Wei, W., Li, D., Chok, J.I., Yang, D., & Shang, H., (2013). “The impact of founders’ academic experiences on linking with local alma maters for Chinese start-ups”, International Journal of Technology Management, 62(2), 177-192

Ling, J., & Chok, J.I., (2013). “The effects of organizational bureaucracy and capital constraints on the development of entrepreneurial cognitions”, Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 18(2), 3-20 (Lead article)

Chok, J.I., (2009). “Regulatory dependence and scientific advisory boards”, Research Policy, 38(5), 710-725
(Recipient of the USC Phi Kappa Phi Student Recognition Award)   

Chok, J.I., & Sun, Q., (2007). “Determinants of idiosyncratic volatility for biotech IPO firms”, Financial Management, 36(4), 107-122

Dr. Chok runs a social science lab that focuses on problem-based research projects that utilize and unpack core concepts such as “opportunity” and “advantage-seeking”. His lab has two major interdisciplinary research programs – “Creative Destruction of Medicine” and “Chinese Entrepreneurship”. Within this portfolio, each research program has multiple projects. Professor Chok is always hopeful that projects from different research programs have the potential to be connected with synergy.

The program on “Creative Destruction of Medicine” attempts to revisit Schumpeterian entrepreneurship in an inclusive manner with a focus on different components of the health sector. In this program, the term “medicine” is defined broadly, allowing us to explore problems ranging from digitization, capital markets and varied disruptive innovation phenomena.

Prof. Chok started with a study of U.S. biotech initial public offerings (IPO), which is a lynchpin of the global life science innovation enterprises. From Prof. Chok’s perspective, this origin point was inspired by the development of Biopolis in Singapore and in fact culminated with Prof Jay Chok’ master thesis. This interest in studying medicine as a wide-ranging, socioeconomic phenomenon entangled with profit motives and varied business models continued well beyond his doctoral education. In recent years, Prof. Chok has broadened this research program to encompass other health system science’ components with disruptive innovation potential.

Projects in this program includes the study of:

• Financing entrepreneurial firms that commercialize high-end disruptive innovation (e.g., biotechnologies)
• Homelessness as an industry
• Digital health spanning varied facets with the potential to ushered in low-end disruptive innovation to benefit society
• Connecting higher education and health systems sciences

With the program on “Chinese Entrepreneurship”, Prof. Chok was initially motivated to study ethnic entrepreneurs in Singapore for his undergraduate thesis because he was inspired by his grandparents’ tale of becoming war refugees, setting up their own businesses in foreign lands, and ultimately assimilating into the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. However, with China’s rise and the increasing strategic importance of the US-China relations, Prof. Chok begun aspiring to be a student of China, broadly defined. Research studies in this program includes the study of:

• Returnee entrepreneurship in Zhongguanchun – a high-tech industrial park in Beijing
• Organizational learning among small and medium enterprises in China, including variables related to disruptive innovation, diffusion of quality standards and transaction memory system among top management teams
• Chinese IPOs listed in United States
• Indigenous management research in Chinese entrepreneurship