Acclaimed pioneer and champion of psychological safety.
Ranked #1 in 2023.
Previously featured:
#1 (2021), #3 (2019), #13 (2017), #16 (2015), #15 (2013), and #35 (2011).
Recipient of the Thinkers50 2019 Breakthrough Idea Award for The Fearless Organization.
Recipient of the Thinkers50 2017 Talent Award for her work on psychological safety.
Right Kind of Wrong was featured on the Thinkers50 Best New Management Booklist in 2024.
Edmondson’s work on psychological safety has been groundbreaking. Her blueprint on creating a fear-free culture is essential, she argues, for organizations to be able to thrive in today’s knowledge economy in which new ideas and critical thought are essential to success. She has also explored the concept of teaming in dynamic work environments, and demonstrated how cross-organizational teaming can impact the building of smart cities. Amy’s most recent book, Right Kind of Wrong, serves as an essential guide for how leaders – and everyone – can embrace human fallibility and learn how to practice failure wisely.
Before her academic career, Edmondson 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. Edmondson received her PhD in organizational behaviour, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University. She is Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, where she has taught since 1996.
The Fearless Organization was featured on the Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist in 2022.
The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well (Atria Books, 2023); The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Wiley, 2018); Extreme Teaming: Lessons in Complex, Cross-sector Leadership (Emerald, 2017); Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016); Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013); Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate and Compete in the Knowledge Economy (Wiley, 2012); A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987).
“Edmondson’s work on psychological safety has profound implications for how we organise work now and in the future.”
Stuart Crainer & Des Dearlove, Thinkers50
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Thinkers50 Limited
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United Kingdom
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