Skip to main content
Amy C Edmondson.jpg

Amy C. Edmondson

Biography

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.

Amy has been recognised by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #3 in 2019; she also received that organisation’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017.  She studies teaming, psychological safety and organisational 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 organisations 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 organisational 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, Amy 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. Amy received her PhD in organisational behaviour, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University.

Latest posts

Sort by

Leadership & Organisations

Psychological Safety Unlocks the Potential of Diverse Teams

H. Bresman, A. C. Edmondson

The dissimilar backgrounds of diverse team members often result in clashes unless care is taken to create a psychologically safe environment.
2 comments

Leadership & Organisations

Without Psychological Safety, Hybrid Work Won’t Work

M. Mortensen, A. C. Edmondson

People managers have their work cut out for them.
1 comment