The Power of Ordinary Practices — HBS Working Knowledge Interview with Dr Teresa Amabile

Teresa M. Amabile's research centers on how the work environment can influence the motivation, creativity, and performance of individuals and teams. A recent study focused on the influence of team leaders on these factors. Professor Amabile and New Business publisher Mike Roberts recently discussed her research. New Business: Teresa, tell us about the general context of your research. Teresa Amabile: With all the focus entrepreneurs and business executives place on strategy, they can lose sight of the people "in the trenches" who actually have to implement the strategy—the knowledge workers who are carrying out the work of the organization. In my research we look at how entrepreneurs and executives can think about the day-by-day management of those people in the trenches,

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The Case for A Behaviorial Strategy - McKinseys

Once heretical, behavioral economics is now mainstream. Money managers employ its insights about the limits of rationality in understanding investor behavior and exploiting stock-pricing anomalies. Policy makers use behavioral principles to boost participation in retirement-savings plans. Marketers now understand why some promotions entice consumers and others don’t. Yet very few corporate strategists making important decisions consciously take into account the cognitive biases—systematic tendencies to deviate from rational calculations—revealed by behavioral economics. It’s easy to see why: unlike in fields such as finance and marketing, where executives can use psychology to make the most of the biases residing in others, in strategic decision making leaders need to recognize their own biases. So despite growing awareness of behavioral economics and numerous efforts by management writers, including ourselves, to make the case for its application, most executives have a justifiably difficult time knowing how to harness its power.

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7 Unusual Psychological Techniques to Boost Creativity: | PsyBlog

Looking for the last piece of the puzzle? Try these 7 research-based techniques for increasing creativity. creativity Everyone is creative: we can all innovate given time, freedom, autonomy, experience to draw on, perhaps a role model to emulate and the motivation to get on with it. But there are times when even the most creative person gets bored, starts going round in circles, or hits a cul-de-sac. So here are 7 unusual creativity boosters that research has shown will increase creativity:

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Missing the Situation Leads to Optimism Among Powerful « The Situationist

Power leads to greater errors in forecasts, according to new research led by social psychologist Dr Mario Weick at the University of Kent. The research, to be published by the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, shows that when people feel powerful they become more optimistic and less accurate in predicting the completion time of forthcoming tasks. The research examined for the first time the planning behaviour of powerful people and found that power drastically reduced the accuracy of forecasts with error rates soaring up to 70%. Dr Weick, a Research Fellow at the University’s School of Psychology, explained: ‘Time is a crucial factor in people’s everyday lives. Whether they are teachers, policy makers or engineers, people routinely plan their work and estimate the time it will take to accomplish tasks. Interestingly, people often underestimate the time it takes to accomplish tasks. This bias is known as the planning fallacy and derives from a too narrow focus on the envisaged goal. The more people focus on what they want

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Creativity and successful brain aging: Going with the flow | Psychology Today

Scholars have suspected for decades that the aging process is kinder to the creative, active, and flexible mind. Now there is more convincing evidence than ever before to support the importance of keeping an open mind to helping your brain age successfully. In a recent scientific article, psychologists Susan McFadden and Anne Basting point out that "What's good for the person is usually good for the brain." They note that the more diverse the older person's social network, the greater the resistance to infection and disease, and the less the cognitive decline. It's not just the plain fact that you have many friends, but that if you have many friends, the chances are good that you are engaging in a variety of cognitively enriching activities.

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