Teresa Amabile Ph.D.

Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration and a Director of Research at Harvard Business School. Originally educated as a chemist at Canisius College, Amabile received her doctorate in psychology from Stanford University. Her research investigates how everyday life inside organizations can influence people and their performance. Originally focusing on individual creativity, Amabile's research has expanded to encompass subjective experience at work (inner work life), individual productivity, team creativity, and organizational innovation. This 35-year program of research has yielded a theory of creativity and innovation; a theory of inner work life; methods for assessing creativity, motivation, and the work environment; a technique for tracking daily experiences at work; and a set of prescriptions for maintaining and stimulating creative productivity.

Amabile was awarded the E. Paul Torrance Award by the Creativity Division of the National Association for Gifted Children in 1998, and the Leadership Quarterly Best Paper Award by the Center for Creative Leadership in 2005. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She has presented her theories, research results, and practical implications to dozens of groups in academia, business, government, and education. At Harvard Business School, she has taught courses on creativity, leadership, and ethics. Before moving to Harvard, she was a psychology professor at Brandeis University.

Amabile was the host/instructor of Against All Odds: Inside Statistics, a 26-part instructional series originally broadcast on PBS. She has served on the boards of Seaman Corporation and other organizations. Amabile is the co-author of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, as well as author of Creativity in Context, Growing Up Creative, and over 100 scholarly papers, chapters, and case studies. She has also published several articles in Harvard Business Review.