Teresa Amabile

Teresa Amabile, a professor and director of research at Harvard Business School, is the coauthor of The Progress Principle. Her current research program focuses on the psychology of everyday work life: how events at work influence subjective experience (“inner work life”) and performance (creativity, productivity and commitment to the work). Her 35 years of research have revealed the drivers behind creativity; methods for assessing creativity, motivation and the work environment; and a set of prescriptions for maintaining and stimulating innovation.

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.

In addition to participating in various executive programs at Harvard Business School, she created the MBA course, “Managing for Creativity.” She also teaches leadership and organizational behavior. Amabile was the host/instructor of “Against All Odds: Inside Statistics,” a 26-part instructional series originally produced for broadcast on PBS. She has served as a director of Harvard Business Publishing and Seaman Corporation, and a trustee of the Creative Education Foundation.