Stacy L. Wood

Promoting change in the real world is tough. Dr. Wood takes a behavioral approach to increase the success of innovations, both in how firms design new products and services and how end-users discover, understand, adopt, and adapt to new things. Innovation is of broad importance; this has allowed Dr. Wood to study change behavior in diverse and fascinating industries. She has worked with the World Bank on global vaccination adoption and with NASCAR on corporate agility in innovation. Upcoming projects look at building market security for coastal seafood producers and the understanding the lack of security in the emerging space economy. For the last several years, Dr. Wood has been working with New Zealand healthcare to design and test AI tools that can improve patient experience and provide better care to rural areas. Her research has developed our knowledge of consumer-centric innovation, appearing in top marketing journals: Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Product Innovation Management, and Journal of Retailing. She gives talks on consumer-centric innovation all over the world. Dr. Wood’s research has also appeared in top medical journals: New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the British Medical Journal. Few scholars have succeeded in publishing at this level in marketing and in medicine. Dr. Wood was president of the Association for Consumer Research in 2018. She served a four-year term as Editor of the Journal of Consumer Research from 2020-2025. Dr. Wood joined the NC State Poole College of Management in 2010, having previously taught at the University of South Carolina, with sabbaticals at Duke and MIT. Previously, she was a recipient of the 1997 H. Paul Root Award for the article published in Journal of Marketing that “made the most significant contribution to the advancement of marketing practice,” the 2005 Lewis Stern Award (AMA) for best paper in marketing and channels, and a runner-up for the 2010 Park Prize for best paper in JCP. Dr. Wood has won 13 teaching awards at USC, Duke, and NC State, including USC’s top university-wide undergraduate teaching award in 2007. Dr. Wood served as the founder and Executive Director for the Center for Neuroeconomic Research while at USC and as an affiliated faculty member of MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium. She has served as an affiliated scholar at the Duke University School of Medicine, exploring healthcare innovations, since 2015. At NC State, she founded and served as the Executive Director of the Consumer Innovation Collaborative from 2012-2019. This innovative center brought together corporate leaders, professors from across the university, and MBA students trained in cutting-edge analytics. A reputation-building program, it served as a launchpad for top NC State students who had the opportunity to work on high-level strategic projects with some of the most innovative companies in the world.

Affiliation on publications · North Carolina State University