Bradley Staats

Brad Staats examines how individuals and organizations learn and improve in order to stay relevant, innovate and succeed on an ongoing basis. His teaching focuses on learning and analytics. He also works with companies around the world on their learning and analytics strategies.

Dr. Staats integrates work in operations management and human behavior to understand how and under what conditions individuals, teams and organizations can perform their best. His field-based research in such settings as healthcare and software services, consulting, call centers and retail, uses archival data and field experiments to provide an interdisciplinary perspective to improve both operations’ theory and practice.

He is the author of the award-winning book “Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself and Thrive” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018). He shares original research, outlines why success demands continuous learning and provides a practical framework for becoming a dynamic learner.

Dr. Staats leads the Center for the Business of Health, a cross-disciplinary initiative targeting some of the biggest healthcare challenges of our time. UNC Kenan-Flagler is leading efforts to grow this initiative, which is by design a pan-university effort that draws upon the wide health sciences strengths across campus, including our top-ranked schools of pharmacy, public health, nursing, dentistry, arts and sciences, medicine and business. By building on this collaborative powerhouse of resources and talent through the Center for the Business of Health, UNC Kenan-Flagler seeks to distinguish both itself and the University as leading national voices in education, research and thought leadership in the business of healthcare.

He received the 2016 Warren Bennis Prize for his article “Why Organizations Don’t Learn” in Harvard Business Review. The award honors the previous year’s best article on leadership. He publishes frequently in leading academic journals and practitioner-focused journals. He is an associate editor at Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management and Production and Operations Management.

He received his DBA in technology and operations management and MBA from Harvard Business School, and his BS with honors in electrical engineering and BA with high honors in Plan II and Spanish from The University of Texas at Austin.

Areas of Expertise

• information technology
• off shoring
• operations
• outsourcing
• teamwork
• big data/analytics
• health and safety
• organizational culture
• performance
• global business