Keyan Li

Keyan Li is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame. He holds a PhD in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-advised by Professors Juanjuan Zhang and Duncan Simester. His research sits at the interface of algorithms, organization, and marketing. He develops new algorithms for business automation and studies how firms’ internal organization shapes their external competitive strategy. Drawing insights from economic theories, he develops new AI and machine-learning methods for cost-effective customer information acquisition, combining experimental design and large language models with communication and log data. He also studies how the way firms organize and innovate shapes their sales and marketing strategies, and how AI is redrawing these dynamics.
He collaborates with firms across the SaaS, automotive, financial services, fashion, online entertainment, and retail industries, as well as with nonprofit organizations. His applied expertise lies in go-to-market strategy, consumer growth, human-AI collaboration, and salesforce management.