Guest Profile

Chip Heath

Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He is the co-author of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, which has been a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller. Chip is also a columnist for Fast Company magazine, and he has spoken and consulted on the topic of "making ideas stick" with organizations such as Nike, the Nature Conservancy, Microsoft, Ideo, and the American Heart Association.

Chip's research examines why certain ideasranging from urban legends to folk medical cures, from Chicken Soup for the Soul stories to business strategy mythssurvive and prosper in the social marketplace of ideas. These naturally sticky ideas spread without external help in the form of marketing dollars, PR assistance, or the attention of leaders. A few years back Chip designed a course, now a popular elective at Stanford, that asked whether it would be possible to use the principles of naturally sticky ideas to design messages that would be more effective. That course, How to Make Ideas Stick, has now been taught to hundreds of students including managers, teachers, doctors, journalists, venture capitalists, product designers, and film producers.

Chips research has appeared in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Cognitive Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Consumer Behavior, Strategic Management Journal, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. Popular accounts of his research have appeared in Scientific American, the Financial Times, The Washington Post, Business Week, Psychology Today, and Vanity Fair. He has appeared on NPR and National Geographic specials.

Chip has taught courses on Organizational Behavior, Negotiation, Strategy, and International Strategy. Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Heath taught at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He received his B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford.