Creativity as Competitive Edge: Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation

Dr. Leigh Thompson

J. Jay Gerber Professor of Dispute Resolution & Organizations, Professor of Management & Organizations, Director of Kellogg Team and Group Research Center and Professor of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

Dr. Leigh Thompson is the J. Jay Gerber Professor of Dispute Resolution & Organizations in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She is the director of the Kellogg Team and Group Research Center, the Leading High Impact Teams Executive program, High Performance Negotiation Skills Executive program and Negotiating in a Virtual World Executive online program, and co-director of the Constructive Collaboration Executive program and the Navigating Work Place Conflict Executive program. In addition, she is an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Northwestern.

Her research focuses on negotiation behavior and performance, creativity, and analogical reasoning. Her most recent research projects include investigations of gender and the use of ethically questionable negotiation strategies; embarrassment and pride and their effects on creativity; and how analogical reasoning improves negotiation performance.

She has published more than 134 research articles and chapters in edited books. She has authored 10 books: Negotiating the Sweetspot: The Art of Leaving Nothing on the Table (Harper Collins); The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (7th edition, Pearson 2020); Stop Spending, Start Managing (Harvard Business Press, 2016); Making The Team (6th edition, Pearson 2018); Creative Conspiracy: The New Rules of Breakthrough Collaboration (Harvard Business Press, 2013); The Truth About Negotiations (2nd edition, Pearson 2013); Creativity and Innovation in Organizational Teams (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006); Shared Knowledge in Organizations (with David Messick and John Levine); Organizational Behavior Today (2008); Negotiation: Theory and Research (2006); and The Social Psychology of Organizational Behavior: Essential Reading (2003).

Thompson earned her PhD and BS from Northwestern University and her MA from University of California, Santa Barbara.

David Schonthal

Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship and Senior Director of Business Design at IDEO

David Schonthal is a Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches courses in new venture creation, design thinking, business acquisition, healthcare entrepreneurship, corporate innovation and creativity. He also serves as the Faculty Director of Kellogg’s Zell Fellows Program, a selective venture accelerator program designed to help student entrepreneurs successfully launch or acquire new businesses.

Outside of Kellogg, Schonthal is a Senior Director of Business Design at IDEO, focusing his attention on helping organizations build and launch new ventures, design transformational new business models, and establish novel go-tomarket strategies for products and services. During his time at IDEO, Schonthal has helped develop platforms such as the Startup-in-Residence program and currently advises Design for Ventures (D4V), an IDEO-affiliated venture capital fund that supports design-focused Japanese startups. He also currently serves as an Operating Partner at Pritzker Group Venture Capital where he invests in consumer, enterprise, and healthcare technology startups.

Prior to his time in Chicago, Schonthal spent nearly a decade in the venture capital and startup world as a partner at Fusion Ventures and Director of Strategy and Venture Development for Tavistock Life Sciences, both based in San Diego, California. He also has held numerous senior operating roles at startups in the technology and life sciences sectors.

Schonthal is co-founder of MATTER, a 25,000-square-foot innovation center in downtown Chicago focused on catalyzing and supporting healthcare entrepreneurship and serves as a member of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship council, ChicagoNext. He is a contributing writer to Forbes Inc., and Fortune magazines, authoring articles on corporate entrepreneurship, innovation and business design. He has received several awards for his work, including a Kellogg Faculty Impact Award for excellence in teaching and his new venture creation course being named “Best Elective” course by Kellogg EMBA students in 2018 and 2019. Schonthal also has been honored on Crain’s Chicago Business magazine’s “40 Under 40” list and as part of the “Techweek 100.”

Schonthal earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and his BA in International Relations from Boston University.