Ella Miron-Spektor

Ella Miron-Spektor is a Professor of Organizational Behavior and the Academic Director of INSEAD's PhD program. She holds the INSEAD Dutch Alumni Fellowship in Leadership, Diversity, and Governance.

Her research focuses on how organizations innovate and learn. Her pioneering work on the paradox mindset examines how leaders and their teams navigate competing demands, processes, interests, and identities. Her studies on innovation explore how entrepreneurs team up with co-founders, and how venture capitalists, managers, and employees evaluate new ideas, learn from experience, and sustain creativity over time.

Ella has received numerous awards for her research, including best paper and best dissertation awards. In 2023, she was honored with the Paradox Research, Education, and Practice (PERP) Distinguished Scholar Award for her contributions to the field. She has also secured competitive grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Fulbright, and the European Commission’s Marie Curie program to study team characteristics that foster innovation, learning, and entrepreneurial success.
Her research has led to interventions that enhance creativity, teamwork, and conflict resolution, and has been published in leading management and psychology journals, including Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Academy of Management Annals, and Harvard Business Review.

Ella serves as a Senior Editor at Organization Science and has co-edited special issues on creativity and digital transformation in top-tier journals. She has co-organized several international conferences, including the Academy of Management Specialized Conference “From Start-up to Scale-Up” (2018), and co-founded a fund aimed at developing leaders and fostering dialogue in the Middle East.

At INSEAD, Ella teaches Organizational Behavior to MBA students, L.E.A.D. in the Master’s in Management program, and a variety of Executive Education programs. Drawing on her research and expertise, she has developed and directs leadership programs that help managers navigate complexity and paradoxical tensions to foster creativity and innovation. She has received the Dean's Commendation for Excellence in MBA Teaching and was recognized by Poets & Quants as one of the favorite business professors of the MBA Class of 2022.