I study how producers and organizations create novelty, how audiences recognize and evaluate it, and how it evolves and spreads across creative industries. I also study how social networks form—how strangers perceive one another, connect, and become friends.

Publications

Google Scholar

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2024 · 121(6), e2306549121

Disrupted Routines Anticipate Musical Exploration

Khwan Kim, Noah Askin & James A. Evans

Changes in everyday routines are associated with musical exploration—and the music discovered during these disruptions continues to shape listening.

Finalist, Edgar Schein Best Student Paper Prize, Berkeley Culture Conference 2024. Featured in the UNDP Human Development Report 2023–24.

Read the paper

Study figure showing listening locations, music exploration and patterns across countries.
Fig. Listening locations and exploration across countries. Original

Working papers under review

Current projects and review statuses. SSRN versions may carry earlier titles or author lists.

Management ScienceMajor revision

The Effect of Subscription-Only Business Models on Platform Participation

Khwan Kim, Manav Raj & Adithya Venkateswaran Authors listed alphabetically.

Platform business models and participation.

SSRN

Acquisition event study: changes in new users per city-week around the switch to subscription-only pricing.
Fig. New users per city-week around the switch to subscription-only pricing. Original

Strategic Management JournalReject & resubmit

Digitization Effects in the Book Industry

Khwan Kim & Manav Raj

Digitisation and the novelty of creative production in publishing.

Best Paper Award, Munich Summer Institute 2025. Best Student Paper Award, OMT Division, Academy of Management 2024, for an earlier solo-authored version.

SSRN

Figure from the book digitisation project showing diffusion and estimates of content novelty over time.
Fig. Diffusion and estimates of content novelty over time. Original

Management ScienceReject & resubmit

Sequential Music Consumption Behavior

Abhishek Deshmane, Noah Askin, Khwan Kim & Yewon Kim

Listening sequences, reference effects and engagement with music.

SSRN

Comparison of in-sample and model-based recommendation performance from the music consumption project.
Fig. In-sample versus model-based recommendation performance. Original

Psychological ScienceRevise & resubmit

Emotion Expression and Status Dynamics

Eric Luis Uhlmann, Khwan Kim, et al.

Emotional expression and the dynamics of social status.

Works in progress

The Effect of Virality on Performance and Creativity in the Music Industry

With Manav Raj

SSRN

Event-study estimates of monthly listeners and Spotify popularity before and after viral chart entry.
Fig. Monthly listeners and popularity around viral chart entry. Original

The Architecture of Modern Friendship: Case of Social Dining on TimeLeft

With Raina Brands

Cross-national association between gender equality and the gender gap in sending likes after social dinners.
Fig. Gender equality and the gender gap in sending likes after social dinners. Original

The Career Arc of Unconventionality in Popular Music

With Sameer B. Srivastava

Prescient, vestigial and contemporaneous unconventionality across musicians’ careers, with uncertainty intervals.
Fig. Prescient, vestigial and contemporaneous unconventionality across careers. Original

Cross-National Collaboration and Performance in U.S. Popular Music

With Exequiel Hernandez, Andrew Carton and Noah Askin

Genre-by-outcome heatmap of cross-national collaboration coefficients for chart, Grammy and certification outcomes.
Fig. Collaboration coefficients by genre and outcome. Original

Symbolic Capital in the Global Art Market Is Facilitated by Culturally Close Diversification

With Frederic Godart and William Maddux

Diagram of artists’ exhibition trajectories and patterns of cultural distance.
Fig. Exhibition trajectories and cultural distance. Original

Evolutionary Consecration for Cult Films: Acceptance and Attention to Deviants in the US Film Market

With Spencer Harrison and Yanbo Song

Plots comparing review attention and thematic clustering across cult films, Oscar nominees and Razzie nominees.
Fig. Review attention and clustering for cult films, Oscar and Razzie nominees. Original

The Collapse and Reconstruction of Relational Boundaries in Musicians: The Case of Break-up Albums

With Spencer Harrison, Akshita Joshi and Noah Askin

Conceptual model of permeable boundaries, boundary collapse and boundary reconstruction.
Fig. Permeable boundaries, collapse and reconstruction. Original

Market Intermediaries as Gatekeepers of Domain Originality: The Case of Broadway Musicals

With Xuege C. Lu and Heeyon Kim

Figure showing novel content over time around an awards rule change in Broadway musicals.
Fig. Novel content around an awards rule change. Original

Attractiveness and Occupations: A Historical Word Embedding Analysis

With Kelly A. Nault, Marko Pitesa and Stefan Thau

Scatterplot of occupations in a historical word embedding analysis.
Fig. Occupations by decade in a historical word embedding. Original

Figures are shown in their original colours. Each preview links to the full-resolution source.

Teaching

2026–
Creativity and Creative IndustriesUCL · Instructor
2025–
Data VisualisationUCL · Instructor
2025–
Social Network Analysis with PythonINSEAD & UCL · Instructor
2021–22
Programming and Computational Social Sciences with PythonINSEAD · Instructor
2023
Organizational BehaviorINSEAD · Teaching Assistant

For course, research or supervision enquiries, email me with a brief description of your interests.

Appointments & education

2025–
Assistant ProfessorUCL School of Management · Organisations & Innovation
2025
PhD in ManagementINSEAD
2018
MA in SociologyUniversity of Chicago

Full academic CV (PDF)

Talks & service

Invited seminars & talks

2026
  • Stockholm School of Economics
  • University of Groningen
  • University of Amsterdam
2025
  • INSEAD Tech Talk X
2024
  • UCL School of Management (Organisations & Innovation)
  • London Business School (Strategy & Entrepreneurship)
  • Melbourne Business School (Management)
  • Harvard Business School (Organizational Behavior)
  • Stockholm School of Economics (House of Innovation)
  • SKEMA Business School (Knowledge, Technology, & Organisation)
  • HEC Paris (Management & Human Resources)
  • Warwick Business School (Entrepreneurship & Innovation)

Conference presentations

2025
  • Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Munich Summer Institute, Munich, Germany
2024
  • Berkeley Culture Conference, UC Berkeley, USA
  • SEI Consortium @ ESSEC, Paris, France
  • Creativity Collaboratorium @ UCL, London, UK
  • Creative Industries Conference @ University of Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Doriot Entrepreneurship Conference @ INSEAD Abu Dhabi, UAE
  • Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Chicago, USA
2023
  • Wharton-INSEAD Doctoral Consortium, Singapore
  • SMS Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada
  • Creative Industries Conference @ INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France
  • Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Boston, USA
  • Strategy Science Conference @ LMU, Munich, Germany

Ad-hoc reviewing

Administrative Science Quarterly; American Journal of Sociology; Poetics; INFORMS / Organization Science Best Dissertation Proposal Competition.