On the morning of November 18, at the invitation of the School of Management, Professor Keli Chen (Guoli Chen), Tenured Professor and Chair of the Strategy Department at INSEAD, delivered an academic lecture entitled Strategic Leadership Research: Past, Present and Future in Lecture Hall 214 of the School of Management on the Chang'an Campus. As the 25th lecture in the School of Management's 2025 Overseas Lecture Series, this event was hosted by Associate Professor Gong Guojia and attended by faculty members and postgraduate students of the Business Administration discipline at the school.

In the lecture, Professor Keli Chen sorted out the academic research on strategic leadership from the three dimensions of Past, Present and Future. Regarding Past research, he took the Upper Echelons Theory proposed by Hambrick and Mason (1984) as the core and introduced the classic framework of strategic leadership research. For Present research, he focused on the cutting-edge trends in the strategic field, elaborated on core topics such as corporate innovation and international expansion, and highlighted the sustained popularity of strategic leadership in academic research. In terms of Future research, he mainly discussed the impact and reshaping of artificial intelligence technology on the traditional role of CEOs.

In the interactive session, the attending faculty and students held a lively discussion on topics such as the ethical boundaries of AI technology application and the collaborative adaptation of CEO capabilities and AI technology. Professor Keli Chen affirmed the academic value of these topics and encouraged the faculty and students to actively engage in research in related fields. This lecture laid a solid foundation for the faculty and students of the School of Management to conduct in-depth research in the field of strategic management and also opened up new research ideas.

(Written by / Luo Tianle | Reviewed by / Shao Jing & Zhang Shuang)

Brief Introduction to the Lecturer

Keli Chen (Guoli Chen) is a Tenured Professor, Chair of the Strategy Department, and Mubadala Chaired Professor at INSEAD, with a PhD in Strategic Management from The Pennsylvania State University, USA. His main research interests include blue ocean strategy, innovation strategy, global strategy, and corporate governance.

He has won the Best Paper Award at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting multiple times and the Emerging Scholar Award from the Strategic Management Society (SMS), and was selected as one of the most influential young professors in Singapore. He previously served as Chair of the Corporate Strategy and Leadership Program at SMS, and also acts as a Senior Editor and Review Committee Member for a number of top-tier academic journals.

In recent years, he has devoted himself to the development of Chinese corporate cases, many of which have been collected by Harvard Business School and The European Case Centre. He was honored with the title of "Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors" by The Case Centre. His research findings have been widely cited by international media outlets including The Washington Times, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, CNBC, CNN, CFO Magazine, South China Morning Post, Financial Times, Forbes, and China Daily.