Amy C. Edmondson

Amy C. Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management

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 #1 in 2021; 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 in 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 15 languages.

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Featured Work Publications Research Summary Awards & Honors

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 #1 in 2021; 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 in 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 15 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.

Featured Work
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

Conquer the most essential adaptation to the knowledge economy

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent—but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind? The traditional culture of “fitting in” and “going along” spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, ridicule or intimidate. Not every idea is good, and yes there are stupid questions, and yes dissent can slow things down, but talking through these things is an essential part of the creative process. People must be allowed to voice half-finished thoughts, ask questions from left field, and brainstorm out loud; it creates a culture in which a minor flub or momentary lapse is no big deal, and where actual mistakes are owned and corrected, and where the next left-field idea could be the next big thing. 

This book explores this culture of psychological safety, and provides a blueprint for bringing it to life. The road is sometimes bumpy, but succinct and informative scenario-based explanations provide a clear path forward to constant learning and healthy innovation.

  • Explore the link between psychological safety and high performance
  • Create a culture where it’s “safe” to express ideas, ask questions, and admit mistakes
  • Nurture the level of engagement and candor required in today’s knowledge economy
  • Follow a step-by-step framework for establishing psychological safety in your team or organization

Shed the “yes-men” approach and step into real performance. Fertilize creativity, clarify goals, achieve accountability, redefine leadership, and much more. Psychological Safety at Work: How to Ensure Learning and Innovation in the Knowledge Economy helps you bring about this most critical transformation.

Extreme Teaming
Lessons in Complex, Cross-Sector Leadership
Today’s global enterprises increasingly involve collaborative work by teams of experts operating across different professions, organizations, and industries. Extreme Teaming provides new insights into the world of complex, cross industry projects and the ways they must be managed. 
Leading experts Amy Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey analyze contemporary cases that expose the complex demands of cross-boundary collaboration on management, and inform our understanding of teams. Containing powerful insights and practical guidelines that allow managers to bridge professional divides and organizational boundaries in order to work together effectively, this is a new exploration of the challenges involved in today’s global enterprises. 

The authors demonstrate that the work done in the modern organization is less and less about looking inward and creating strong teams inside the company, and more about teaming across boundaries – that often are in flux. 

Extreme Teaming is a must-read book for all courses related to leading open innovation; teamwork and collaboration; project management; and cross-boundary work.
Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation
Machiavelli famously wrote, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." That's what this book is about—innovation far more audacious than a new way to find a restaurant or a smart phone you can wear on your wrist. Amy C. Edmondson and Susan Salter Reynolds explore large-scale systemic innovation that calls for "big teaming": intense collaboration between professions and industries with completely different mindsets. To explore the kind of leadership required to build the future, Edmondson and Reynolds tell the story of an award-winning "smart city" start-up launched with the ambitious goal of creating a showcase high-tech city from scratch. The collaboration brought together software entrepreneurs, real estate developers, city government officials, architects, builders, and technology corporations. Taking a close look at the work, norms, and values in each of these professional domains, readers gain insight into why teaming across fields is so challenging, and what leaders can do to help.
Teaming
How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy
New breakthrough thinking in organizational learning, leadership, and change

Continuous improvement, understanding complex systems, and promoting innovation are all part of the landscape of learning challenges today's companies face. Amy Edmondson shows that organizations thrive, or fail to thrive, based on how well the small groups within those organizations work. In most organizations, the work that produces value for customers is carried out by teams, and increasingly, by flexible team-like entities. The pace of change and the fluidity of most work structures means that it's not really about creating effective teams anymore, but instead about leading effective teaming.

Teaming shows that organizations learn when the flexible, fluid collaborations they encompass are able to learn. The problem is teams, and other dynamic groups, don't learn naturally. Edmondson outlines the factors that prevent them from doing so, such as interpersonal fear, irrational beliefs about failure, groupthink, problematic power dynamics, and information hoarding. With Teaming, leaders can shape these factors by encouraging reflection, creating psychological safety, and overcoming defensive interpersonal dynamics that inhibit the sharing of ideas. Further, they can use practical management strategies to help organizations realize the benefits inherent in both success and failure.

  • Presents a clear explanation of practical management concepts for increasing learning capability for business results
  • Introduces a framework that clarifies how learning processes must be altered for different kinds of work
  • Explains how Collaborative Learning works, and gives tips for how to do it well
  • Includes case-study research on Intermountain healthcare, Prudential, GM, Toyota, IDEO, the IRS, and both Cincinnati and Minneapolis Children's Hospitals, among others

Based on years of research, this book shows how leaders can make organizational learning happen by building teams that learn.

Books
Journal Articles
Book Chapters
Working Papers
Cases and Teaching Materials
Presentations
  • Edmondson, Amy C. "How to Lead in a Crisis." In The Way We Work Series. TED Talks, October 2020. View Details
  • Edmondson, Amy C. "The Impact of Covid-19 on Psychological Safety in the Workplace (Interview)." HSTalks Business and Management Collection (April 23, 2020). View Details
  • "The Psychological Safety Imperative." HSTalks: The Business & Management Collection, Henry Stewart Talks Ltd., April 30, 2020. View Details
  • Edmondson, Amy C., Ann Winslow, Richard Bohmer, and Gary P. Pisano. "Different Patterns of Performance improvement for explicit and tacit knowledge: An empirical test." . View Details
  • Dillon, James R., Shikhar Sarin, and Amy C. Edmondson. "Antecedents of Boundary Spanning in Cross-functional NPD Teams." Paper presented at the Product Development and Management Association Annual Global Conference on Product Innovation Management, Orlando, FL, September 2007. View Details
  • Edmondson, A. "Methodological Fit in Management Research." Kurt Lewin Instituut, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, May 1, 2003. View Details
  • Edmondson, A. "How Leaders Promote Learning in Interdisciplinary Action Teams." Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam, Department of Work, Organization and Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, May 1, 2003. View Details
  • Edmondson, A. "Methodological Fit in Organizational Field Research: A Framework." Paper presented at the MIT Organization Studies Seminar, December 01, 2002. View Details
Other Publications and Materials
Research Summary
Overview
My research examines psychological safety and cross-boundary teaming within and between organizations. I am particularly interested in how leaders enable the learning and collaboration that are vital to performance in a dynamic environment. In one stream of my research, I study collaboration among diverse experts to solve challenging problems in cities. In this stream, teaming across industry boundaries is increasingly important. Yet, teaming and learning among diverse experts, facing high uncertainty, requires facing both interpersonal and technical risks. A second stream of my research examines how leaders create psychological safety in support of organizational agility as needed to thrive in fast-paced, challenging, uncertain contexts.
Awards & Honors
Ranked #1 in the 2021 Thinkers50 list—a list of the world's most influential management thinkers.
Winner of the Joseph E. McGrath Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Groups from INGRoup in 2021.
Received the IOC Vision of Excellence in Leadership Award from the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital in 2021.
Received the Talent Development Champion Award from the Association for Talent Development (ATD) in 2021.
Named 2020 Valkhof Chair by the Radboud University Medical Center.
Finalist for the 2019 McKinsey Award for the Best Article in Harvard Business Review for "Cross-Silo Leadership" (May–June 2019) with Tiziana Casciaro and Sujin Jang.
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (John Wiley & Sons, 2018) was named one of Soundview Magazine’s Best Business Books of 2019.
Winner of the 2019 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Organization Development and Change Division of the Academy of Management.
Named the Most Influential International Thinker in Human Resources by HR Magazine in 2019
Winner of the 2019 Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award for being a “pioneer of psychological safety and author of The Fearless Organization, a ground-breaking blueprint on creating a fear-free culture.”
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (John Wiley & Sons, 2018) was named one of the Best International Non-Fiction Books of 2019 by the Sharjah International Book Fair.
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (John Wiley & Sons, 2018) was listed as #14 on the Porchlight Business Best Seller list in 2019.
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (John Wiley & Sons, 2018) was selected as an 800-CEO-READ Business Book in the Management and Workplace Culture category in 2018.
Winner of the 2018 Sumantra Ghoshal Award for Rigour and Relevance in the Study of Management from London Business School.
Named one of the 20 Most Influential International Thinkers in Human Resources by HR Magazine in 2018.
Included in the 2017 Thinkers50 list—a list of the world's most influential management thinkers.
Winner of the 2017 Thinkers50 Talent Award.
Named as one of the Most Influential International Thinkers in Human Resources by HR Magazine in 2017.
Winner of the 2017 So!WHAT Award for the most outstanding article from five years earlier for “CEO Relational Leadership and Strategic Decision Quality in Top Management Teams: The Role of Team Trust and Learning from Failure” (Strategic Organization, February 2012) with Abraham Carmeli and Asher Tishler.
Winner of the First Annual OBHR Distinguished Scholar Award from Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management in 2017.
Named as one of the Most Influential International Thinkers in Human Resources by HR Magazine in 2016.
Included on the 2015 Thinkers50 list—a list of the world's most influential management thinkers.
Awarded the Doctorem Honoris Causa from Universiteit Maastricht in 2013.
Included on the 2013 Thinkers50 list—a list of the world's most influential management thinkers.
Named as one of the Most Influential International Thinkers in Human Resources by HR Magazine in 2013.
Winner of the 2012 Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior Award from the Academy of Management’s Organizational Behavior Division for "Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-for-granted Rules of Self-censorship at Work" (Academy of Management Journal, 2011) with James Detert.
Honorable Mention, 2012 Best Conference Paper Prize from the Strategic Management Society for "Managing Ambiguity: Growing a New Business in a Nascent Industry" with Tiona Zuzul.
Winner of the Best Paper with Practical Implications Award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management for her paper with Melissa Valentine, "Team Scaffolds: How Minimal In-Group Structures Support Fast-Paced Teaming" (HBS Working Paper 12–062 and Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, 2012).
The 16th Annual Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) Interactive Award in eLearning in 2011 with Michael Roberto for “Leadership and Team Simulation: Everest V2.”
Winner of the Best Article published in 2011, from the Academy of Management Journal, for "Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-for-granted Rules of Self-censorship at Work" with Jim Detert (June 2011).
Winner of the 2004 Accenture Award for "Why Hospitals Don't Learn from Failures: Organizational and Psychological Dynamics That Inhibit System Change" (with Anita Tucker, California Management Review, winter 2003).
Winner of the 2000 Academy of Management Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior for "Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams" (Administrative Science Quarterly, December 1999).
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