Faculty
Deborah Ancona is the Seley Distinguished Professor of Management, a Professor of Organization Studies, and the Founder of the MIT Leadership Center at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Her pioneering research into how successful teams operate has highlighted the critical importance of managing outside, as well as inside, the team’s boundary. This research directly led to the concept of X-Teams as a vehicle for driving innovation within large organizations. Ancona’s work also focuses on the concept of distributed leadership and on the development of research-based tools, practices, and teaching/coaching models that enable organizations to foster creative leadership at every level.
She is the author of the book, X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed (Harvard Business School Press) and the related article, “In Praise of the Incomplete Leader” (Harvard Business Review). In addition to X-Teams, her studies of team performance have also been published in the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, and the MIT Sloan Management Review. Her previous book, Managing for the Future: Organizational Behavior and Processes (South-Western College Publishing), centers on the skills and processes needed in today’s diverse and changing organization. Ancona has served as a consultant on leadership and innovation to companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Bose, Takeda, Li & Fung, OCP, Accenture, ASA, and has served on the Board of the Penn Graduate School of Education and the working group of the Canadian Council of Academies.
Ancona holds a BA and an MS in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in management from Columbia University.
Ancona, Deborah L., and Henrik Bresman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2023.
Ancona, Deborah L. and Henrik Bresman. MIT Sloan Management Review, December 13, 2022.
Ancona, Deborah, and Dennis N.T. Perkins. Harvard Business Review, January 2022.
Ancona, Deborah L., Henrik Bresman, and Mark Mortensen. Journal of Management Studies Vol. 58, No. 1 (2021): 287-291.
Ancona, Deborah L., Michele Williams, and Gisela Gerlach. MIT Sloan Management Review, September 8, 2020.
Ancona, Deborah. MIT Sloan Management Review, January 2020.
MIT Sloan’s Deborah Ancona explains how leaders can start, manage, and support externally oriented innovation within their organizations.
Uncertainty will abound in 2023. Focus now on resilience, agility, examining external factors, and innovation in artificial intelligence.
Some large organizations develop new talent by empowering employees to lead and make choices about the projects to which they contribute.
"Family ghosts are those attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs that we take from childhood and bring with us into the executive suite."
"Executives need to forge a new operating model that addresses the reality of firms introducing emerging technologies and reduced headcounts."
"We have found that difficulties in adopting the x-team approach are typically caused by outmoded assumptions about teams at all levels."
This online short course provides a step-by-step guide to the 4-CAPS+ Leadership Framework, developed by Faculty Director Deborah Ancona and her colleagues at MIT. The framework provides key insights into the skills required for effective leadership.
This unique program encourages introspection to help you identify and cultivate your personal leadership signature. It also demonstrates how to apply your leadership signature to your specific circumstances, regardless of where you are along your professional development path.
