PhD candidate Mostafa Khoshbash won the Academy of Management (AOM)’s Technology and Innovation Management Division’s Best Student Paper Award, and was selected as a finalist for the Best Conference Paper Award in the same division for AOM’s 2026 conference in Philadelphia.
Khoshbash, who recently advanced to doctoral candidacy, was recognized for his paper “Specialization Tradeoffs in General-Purpose Technology: The Case of the Open Foundation Model’s Ecosystem.”
The Academy of Management is the leading professional association for management and organization scholars. With over 21,000 members across 120 countries, the organization’s community includes professors, doctoral students, and practitioners advancing knowledge and its real-world impact. The Technology and Innovation Management Division (TIM) is centered around interdisciplinary scholarship and dialogue on the management of innovation and technological change from a variety of perspectives, including strategic, managerial, behavioral, and operational issues.
Khoshbash holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology and an MBA in Strategy from University of Tehran. His research focuses on economics of innovation in platform ecosystems, emerging technologies, and open-source managed ecosystems, with a particular interest in how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence shape innovation and competition. Alongside his academic work, Mostafa has been actively engaged with startups and the open-source software industry.
“This recognition gives me even more energy and motivation to continue working on my dissertation,” wrote Khoshbash. “Where I study the specialization of foundation models as one of the innovation dynamics influencing downstream innovation.”
Sections of this article were adapted from www.aom.org
To learn more about the Department of Technology Management at UC Santa Barbara, visit tmp.ucsb.edu/academics.