Dr. Will Zhao

Will Zhao is an Assistant Professor of Organization and Human Behavior at the UW Stratford School, and a passionate interdisciplinary researcher focusing on Innovation. He earned his Ph.D. from the French Grande Ecole EM Lyon Business School and pursued his postdoctoral research at Stanford University as a SCANCOR scholar. Before joining UW Stratford, Will taught for five years at an AACSB-accredited Canadian business school, where he received his first promotion to tenured associate professor and won several teaching and research-related awards at both faculty and university levels.

Will is a passionate advocate of Human-Centered Innovation Research (HCIR), which underscores the crucial role of humanistic values in driving innovation across various domains. To further his interdisciplinary investigations, Will integrates multimodal analysis into his methodology, leveraging both semio-discursive approaches and artificial intelligence techniques. This unique blend has resulted in scholarly contributions published in reputable journals across business, education, engineering, and interdisciplinary studies.

As a research supervisor with UW Approved Doctoral Dissertation Supervisor (ADDS) status, Will enthusiastically welcomes inquiries from prospective Master's, Doctoral, and Postdoctoral researchers who share an interest in boundary-spanning research into Innovation, especially where it intersects with Organization, Education, Entrepreneurship, Multimodal Analysis, Artificial Intelligence Techniques, and/or Semio-discursive Approaches. Will looks forward to working with students in an inclusive and collaborative environment to jointly explore new frontiers in understanding and fostering innovation across disciplines.