Will Zhao is an Associate Professor of Organization and Human Behavior at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, University of Waterloo. Dr. Zhao earned his PhD from the French Grande Ecole EMLYON Business School and pursued his postdoctoral research at Stanford University as a SCANCOR scholar.
Dr. Zhao is a passionate advocate for Human-Centered Innovation Research (HCIR), examining how innovations can be designed, scaled, and governed to better serve people and communities that conventional assumptions may leave behind. His work appears in leading journals including the Journal of Small Business Management, Public Management Review, and IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, and is presented regularly at major international conferences across management, engineering, and education. He is also the author of multiple Ivey business cases that bring his research and practical insights into management classrooms. His teaching and research have received various faculty- and university-level distinctions.
Courses Taught:
- GBDA 402: Capstone (Business)
- MDEI 612: Working in Teams (Organizational Behaviour course, also part of MDEI Intensive 1)
- MDEI 625: Business Innovation and Impact
Academic Mentorship/Coordination:
- GBDA Capstone
- Design Jam
- Map the Systems Competition