In addition to her field research on creativity, Teresa Amabile is a keen observer and enthusiastic supporter of the creative efforts of her HBS students. To illustrate her belief that entrepreneurial success is driven by passion for ideas, Amabile recounts the launch, by her former students Michelle Crames and Jeff Norton (both MBA ’ 03) of a company called Lean Forward Media. “Michelle and Jeff discovered they shared a childhood passion for a series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure, which allowed readers to select from a variety of possible plot twists as the stories progressed,” Amabile explains. “They licensed the rights to the series and used DVD technology to update the concept and make it interactive by today’s technological standards. The company they founded as HBS students is now up and running and doing quite well, and it all came about because of something they loved when they were kids.”

Another former student, Frans Johansson (MBA ’00), is now an entrepreneur and the author of The Medici Effect, a best-selling book that focuses on creativity at the intersection of different fields, cultures, and industries. “Frans interviewed people in a variety of professions — from physicists to cooks — to understand how creative breakthroughs happen,” she notes. “He found that very often the most important creative breakthroughs happen where different perspectives come together, both among members of a team and in the minds of individuals.

“I think that last part is really intriguing,” Amabile continues. “Frans found that highly creative individuals often have degrees in widely disparate disciplines, were raised in two or more cultures or countries, or have work experience in a couple of unrelated professions. They are able to draw on these different ways of comprehending the world to come up with ideas that would never happen without such a rich intersection of experiences.”

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