Apr 13, 2020
Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership
and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established
to support the study of human interactions that lead to the
creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the
betterment of society.
Edmondson has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global
ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was
ranked #3 in 2019; she also received that organization’s
Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017.
She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organizational learning, and her articles have been published numerous academic and management outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review and California Management Review. Her most recent book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (Wiley, 2019), offers a practical guide for organizations serious about success in the modern economy and has been translated into 11 languages.
Her prior books – Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and
compete in the knowledge economy (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Teaming to
Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Extreme Teaming (Emerald, 2017) –
explore teamwork in dynamic organizational environments.
In Building the future: Big teaming for audacious
innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016), she examines the challenges and
opportunities of teaming across industries to build smart
cities.
Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos
River Learning Centers, where she worked on transformational change
in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief
Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book A
Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster
Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987) clarifies Fuller's mathematical
contributions for a non-technical audience. Edmondson received her
PhD in organizational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in
engineering and design from Harvard University.