Heath is an emeritus professor of Organizational Behavior at the Thrive Foundation for Youth at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His research examines why certain ideas—from urban legends to home remedies, from "Chicken Soup for the Soul" stories to business strategy myths—survive and thrive in the social marketplace of ideas. A few years ago, Heath designed a course, now a popular elective at Stanford, that explored the possibility of using the principles of naturally sticky ideas to design more effective messages. The material from that course, "How to Make Ideas Stick", has been taught to hundreds of students, including managers, professors, nonprofit leaders, doctors, journalists, venture capitalists, product designers, and film producers.
Heath co-authored (with his brother, Dan) a book titled Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, published by Random House in January 2007.
Heath's research has appeared in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Cognitive Psychology, Journal of Consumer Behavior, Strategic Management Journal, Psychological Science, and Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. Popular articles about his research have been published in Scientific American, Financial Times, Washington Post, Business Week, Psychology Today, Vanity Fair, NPR, and a National Geographic television program.
Heath has taught courses on organizational behavior, negotiation, strategy, international strategy, and social entrepreneurship. Before joining Stanford, he taught at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. He earned his bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University and his PhD in psychology from Stanford.
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