Now

Three working papers active with PhD students:

• U.S. export controls and venture capital reallocation in China's semiconductor sector, with Yikai Cao, Wanru Deng, and Guankai Zhai. In preparation for Management Science.
• Inflation Reduction Act and cleantech entrepreneurship, with Yikai Cao, Rishee Jain, and Dinesh Moorjani. In preparation for PNAS.
• China's battery subsidies and entry composition, with Guankai Zhai. In preparation for Research Policy.

Also working on a methodological paper on AI-enabled social science research design, presented at the FDS Workshop at Yale (May 2026).

New grant (2026): One of twelve projects funded under the Stanford Accelerator for Learning's AI in Teaching and Learning at Stanford: Innovation with Evidence program — Proxy-Expert Practice: An Agentic AI System for Teaching Entrepreneurial Problem Validation, with Itai Ashlagi and PhD collaborators Yikai Cao and Xilan Zhang. Problem validation, working out whether a problem is real and worth solving, is arguably the most consequential skill in entrepreneurship and among the hardest to teach. The project builds an agentic AI system that acts as a proxy expert: an AI instantiation of a specific real expert's problem representation, grounded in multi-session discovery interviews with fellows from Stanford's Distinguished Careers Institute. Students practice validation against the proxy through adversarial verification, then face the real fellows in a live transfer study, with team-level random assignment for causal identification. The 14-month project runs through Chuck's courses at Stanford.

Summer underway. Focused on:

• In Shenzhen August 20 – September 10 as Faculty Director of the Stanford BOSP Shenzhen Global Seminar, where 15 Stanford undergraduates will study the Shenzhen hardware ecosystem and work on hardware startups alongside InnoX. My fifth trip to Shenzhen since 2017, and the first long enough to work there rather than visit
• Continuing the ITRI–Stanford Advancing Technology Ventures Program
• Running the KFUPM Founders Track with Dhahran Techno Valley, bridging Saudi deep-tech talent to Silicon Valley
• Continuing the Aramco Lab7 Advancing Technology Ventures executive program through Stanford CGOE
• Refreshing materials for MS&E 272 (Entrepreneurship Without Borders) with Vimbayi Kajese for Fall

Recently presented two papers at SCECR in Tokyo (climate-tech industrial policy and China semiconductor export controls) and served as a discussant at the SEJ Paper Development Workshop at CUHK-Shenzhen, June 2026.

On the calendar:

• Guanghua School of Management, Peking University · invited seminar · September 15, 2026
• SMS Annual Conference, Berlin · Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 2026 Best Paper Prize ceremony, honoring the work with the late Edward B. Roberts · October 17, 2026
• INFORMS Annual Meeting, San Francisco · session organizer · November 1–4, 2026
• Ross School of Business, University of Michigan · invited seminar · November 20, 2026

Full upcoming list on the Talks page →

Actively advising two current PhD students (Yikai Cao and Xilan Zhang) and welcoming an incoming postdoctoral researcher (Tess Lallemant, Fall 2026, King Center sponsored). One recent graduate (Wajeeha Ahmad) heading to Columbia Business School as an incoming assistant professor.

Full group on the Advising page →

Just out: a sole-author essay at the World Economic Forum on why leading on AI innovation requires building the institutional layer between state funding and market freedom, not choosing between them (June 2, 2026).

Also drafting essays for the newsletter on entrepreneurship and innovation policy, full archive at newsletter.chuckeesley.com. Recent threads: the algorithmic financing of misinformation, what universities actually contribute to entrepreneurship, and reflections on Ed Roberts and the academic lineage I inherited through him.

Currently on the desk:

• The Shenzhen Experiment (Juan Du), excellent on the history and institutional development of Shenzhen, and a useful corrective to the fishing-village origin story. Reading it ahead of the BOSP seminar.
• Chip Champion (Owen Hung-Wen Lin), complement to Chris Miller's Chip War on the firm-level view of TSMC and Taiwan.
• Breakneck (Dan Wang), how China actually builds, alongside our battery-subsidies work.
• Celebrating Entrepreneurship (Edward B. Roberts), Ed's career retrospective on the MIT Entrepreneurship Center he founded.

Full curated reading list →

Continuing as Independent Non-Executive Director and Remuneration Committee chair at Vobile Group (HKEX: 3738), advisor/investor at TSVC, Vectors Capital, and Empo Health, and Venture Partner / LP at Brave Capital. Foundation work with Lijie Zhou at the Zhou & Eesley Family Foundation.