Deborah L. Ancona

About

Deborah L. Ancona is the Seley Distinguished Professor of Management and a Professor of Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She is also the Founder of the MIT Leadership Center. Her pioneering research focuses on how successful teams operate, emphasizing the importance of managing both inside and outside team boundaries. This work led to the development of the concept of X-Teams, which are designed to drive innovation within large organizations. Ancona's research also explores distributed leadership and the creation of research-based tools, practices, and coaching models that foster creative leadership at all levels of an organization. She is the author of the book 'X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed' and has published influential articles such as 'In Praise of the Incomplete Leader' in Harvard Business Review. Her studies of team performance have appeared in prominent journals including the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, and the MIT Sloan Management Review. Ancona holds a BA and an MS in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in management from Columbia University. She has served as a leadership and innovation consultant to various companies and has been involved in academic and professional boards, including the Board of the Penn Graduate School of Education and the Canadian Council of Academies.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Public relations
• Engineering
• Geography

Selected publications

• Beyond Task and Maintenance: Defining External Functions in Groups

  DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) · 2018-02-08 · 215 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Using interview and log data from 38 new product team managers and 15 team members, we identify a set of activities that group members use to manage their dependence on external groups. Team member...

  Publisher

• In praise of the incomplete leader

  IEEE Engineering Management Review · 2009-01-01 · 193 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Today's top executives are expected to do everything right, from coming up with solutions to unfathomably complex problems to having the charisma and prescience to rally stakeholders around a perfect vision of the future. But no one leader can be all things to all people. It's time to end the myth of the complete leader, say the authors. Those at the top must come to understand their weaknesses as well as their strengths. Only by embracing the ways in which they are incomplete can leaders fill i…

  PublisherDOI

• Outward Bound: Strategies for Team Survival in the Organization

  DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) · 2015-08-23 · 83 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Using the external perspective as a research lens, this study examines team-context interaction in five consulting teams.The data show three strategies toward the environment: informing, parading, and probing.Probing teams revise their knowledge of the environment through external contact, initiate programs with outsiders, and promote their team achievements within the organization.They are rated the highest performers, although member satisfaction and cohesiveness suffer in the short run.Result…

  Publisher

• Bridging the boundary--external process and performance in organizational teams

  Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Gardens Kew) · 2011-08-09 · 81 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The nature of the external activities in which groups engage was investigated using a sample of 45 new product development teams.Three broad types of activities were identified.The levels of these activities rather than simply the frequency of team members' communication with outsiders was related to independent ratings of team performance.In addition, patterns of these activities were monitored in the teams and four strategies toward the environment were derived. OverviewAlthough groups have al…

  Publisher

• Information Technology and Work Groups: The Case of New Product Teams

  Psychology Press eBooks · 2014-01-14 · 56 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Hypertext, by blurring the distinction between author and reader, allows, encourages, and even demands new modes of reading, writing, teaching, and learning. Intermedia, the networked hypermedia system developed at Brown University by its Institute of Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS), allows, encourages, and even demands new modes of reading, writing, teaching, and learning. The combination of labor, political power, and aggressiveness that appears in this dictionary definition wel…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David F. Caldwell

  Santa Clara University

  11 shared

• Michael L. Tushman

  7 shared

• Paul S. Goodman

  Newcastle University

  6 shared

• David Caldwell

  Santa Clara University

  6 shared

• Henrik Bresman

  6 shared

• Barbara Lawrence

  6 shared

• Tony Suchman

  Indiana University Health

  4 shared

• Marjorie M. Godfrey

  University of New Hampshire

  4 shared

Labs

• MIT Center for Collective IntelligencePI

Awards & honors

• 2022 Samuel M. Seegal Faculty Prize
• 2018 Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching

Similar researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Erin Kellyh-49
• Jackson G. Luh-29
• Emilio J. Castillah-20