Teresa Amabile

October 02, 2019

4:00-5:00 p.m.

Free and open to the public.

Michigan Ross Campus, Ross Building, 701 Tappan, Robertson Auditorium, Ann Arbor



Teresa M. Amabile
Baker Foundation Professor
Harvard Business School

About the talk

Creativity is responsible for all human progress. Unfortunately, powerful forces in most classroom, workplace, and home environments can kill the motivation for creativity. In this interactive session, Harvard Professor Teresa Amabile will describe the science underlying these discoveries, as well as the science behind keeping creativity alive. The audience will leave with tips and tools for nurturing their own creativity and facilitating creative growth in their children, students, and work colleagues.


About Amabile

Teresa Amabile has researched and written about creativity for over 40 years. Beginning with a series of papers in the 1970s and 1980s, she was instrumental in establishing the social psychology of creativity – the study of how the social environment can influence creative behavior, primarily by influencing motivational state.

Amabile’s research has examined individual creativity and productivity, team creativity, and organizational innovation. This program of research has yielded a comprehensive theory of creativity and innovation; methods for assessing creativity, motivation, and the work environment; and a set of prescriptions for maintaining and stimulating both individual creativity and organizational innovation.

Her more recent research investigated how everyday life inside organizations can influence people and their performance by affecting inner work life, the confluence of motivation, emotion, and perceptions. She is currently studying retirement and post-employment life, including the impact of creative activities on attitudes toward aging and experiences in later life.

Amabile’s scholarly work has appeared in a variety of psychology and organizational behavior journals, as well as her 2011 book (with Steven Kramer), The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. She has presented her work to audiences in a variety of settings, including Pixar, Genentech, TEDx Atlanta, Apple, and The World Economic Forum in Davos.

In 2018, Amabile received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management, the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Israel Organizational Behavior Conference, and the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. In 2011 and 2013, she was named to the global Thinkers50 list.

Amabile holds a BS in Chemistry from Canisius College and a PhD in psychology from Stanford University.


Host

Julia Lee, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations


Sponsors

The Center for Positive Organizations thanks University of Michigan Organizational Learning, Sanger Leadership Center, Tauber Institute for Global Operations, Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, Lisa and David (MBA ’87) Drews, and Diane (BA ’73) and Paul (MBA ’75) Jones for their support of the 2019-20 Positive Links Speaker Series.



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