معرفی
Eric Zhao is a Professor of Strategy and Associate Dean for Research at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and holds a joint appointment at St Hugh’s College. His research bridges strategic management, organizational theory, and entrepreneurship, with a focus on optimal distinctiveness, societal institutions, and entrepreneurial resourcefulness. He previously served as visiting faculty at Stanford University and held the Samuel and Pauline Glaubinger Chair of Entrepreneurship at Indiana University.
His research explores how organizations achieve optimal distinctiveness in competitive markets and investigates the role of societal institutions like patriarchy and social class in shaping entrepreneurial behavior. Key contributions include foundational work on competitive positioning and a solo-authored book on optimal distinctiveness. His work has been published in leading journals such as Strategic Management Journal and Organization Science.
Teaching spans strategy, organization theory, and entrepreneurship across undergraduate, MBA, and executive programs. Awards include the Academy of Management Emerging Scholar Award in Entrepreneurship (2019) and Strategic Management Society Emerging Scholar Award (2022), making him the first scholar to receive top early-career honors in both strategy and entrepreneurship.
Research themes include strategic positioning, societal institutions, entrepreneurial resourcefulness, and crisis resilience. Recent work examines international expansion signaling, cultural product innovation, and the double-edged effects of exemplar similarity in market entry strategies.
