Colin did his PhD at Harvard under Teresa Amabile, whose research made the case that creativity isn't a fixed trait, but something a company's management choices either feed or starve. He teaches organisations and innovation at UCL, wrote The Collective Edge (now in ten languages), and played trumpet professionally with the Grammy-nominated Either/Orchestra. The jazz is where a lot of his thinking on how groups improvise started.
When we talk about scientific innovation and life science ventures we don’t immediately associate this with creativity. Yet there's been a decade of research on why creativity is the key to innovation, especially in ventures built on it.
Creativity doesn't just happen. It also isn't a gift some people have and others don't. You have to create the conditions for it to flourish.
There are a lot of misconceptions about how creativity works, and most companies are run on them. The result is that the conditions creativity needs are usually the first things a well-run company squeezes out through milestone pressure, compliance load, and commercial teams looking over the shoulders of research teams.
We've invited Colin M. Fisher, one of the foremost experts on group dynamics, to share what it takes to build a genuinely creative organisation.
We will explore:
What drives creative work and what kills it. Amabile's research found intrinsic motivation is the engine, and that the things companies reach for instinctively — closer monitoring, evaluation pressure, tighter deadlines — are exactly what shut it down. Colin will get into what that means for how you run the venture.
Why progress matters more than incentives. The single biggest driver of motivation is making visible progress on meaningful work, even small wins. That's hard in biotech, where the real outcome is years away and most teams rarely see it. How do you manufacture a sense of progress over a ten-year horizon?
Autonomy without abdication. Creative teams need control over how the work gets done. The hard part for a CEO is knowing when to step in and when to stay out — and the instinct to step in is usually the wrong one.
The jazz angle: why preparation enables improvisation. Colin played trumpet professionally, and a lot of his thinking comes from there. Elite musicians treat deep preparation as the thing that makes spontaneity possible, not its opposite. Most companies treat structure and creativity as enemies. I think by the end of the session you will agree they're the same thing.
Here is Colin's website: https://colinmfisher.com/about