Yanbo Song 宋彦博
Assistant Professor in Department of Management and Marketing
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU)
Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor at HK PolyU, holding a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from INSEAD. My research focuses on creativity, proactivity, and leadership, exploring how individuals and teams navigate uncertainty to generate and recognize novel ideas.
My research on creative collaboration dynamics in Hollywood and job crafting in a restaurant chain has been published in top-tier outlets such as the Academy of Management Journal and the Journal of Business and Psychology. Currently, my work investigates the dynamics of co-creation across cultural industries, examining how professionals collaborate in film, design, and video games.
Before joining academia, I was a Director at CEIBS Digital in Shanghai, where I led corporate learning and case development initiatives for major global firms across the healthcare and technology sectors.
Research Interests
Creativity
My research explores how individuals and teams generate, pitch, and evaluate novel ideas in uncertain environments. Using multi-method approaches across dynamic settings, e.g., Early Access video games, Hollywood vs. indie studio film production, fashion co-branding, functionally diverse startup teams, I examine how ideas are communicated and integrated to shape engagement from early audiences, co-creators, and stakeholders.
Proactivity
I investigate how individuals shape their tasks, relationships, and the meaning of their work through self-initiated efforts, especially under pressure. By highlighting the socially embedded nature of proactivity, our research on job crafting in restaruant chain informs how organizations can calibrate interteam competition and leadership orientation to enable bottom-up adaptation and self-regulation of employees.
Leadership
My studies examine how leaders enable or hinder creative collaboration and proactive work re-design. One stream investigates how creative leaders manage conflict and navigate collaborative breakdowns framed as "creative differences." Another stream explores how leadership orientation shapes employees' job crafting in competitive environments. Together, these studies illuminate leadership approaches that sustain innovation without suppressing autonomy.
Teaching Topics
Organizational Behavior
My teaching emphasizes experiential learning, conceptual clarity, and inclusive dialogue. By blending foundational theories with real-world relevance through case discussions and simulations, I challenge students to explore what drives individual motivation, how team identity emerge, and how leadership shapes organizational culture, etc. My goal is to equip students to lead with empathy and drive change with meaningfulness.
Negotiation
I guide students in teams through the psychological, strategic, and ethical dimensions of bargaining, emphasizing structured preparation and value creation. Utilizing multi-round case simulations, students practice crafting MESOs, navigating belief asymmetries, and managing power dynamics. Through in-depth debriefs, I aim to cultivate negotiators who are tactically effective, culturally sensitive, and principled in high-stakes conversations.
New Business Venture
Acting as both instructor and venture facilitator, I coach students through the entrepreneurial journey from Business Model Canvas (BMC) development to hypotheses testing and investor pitching. I tailor feedback to help teams test assumptions, iterate based on real user data, and craft compelling narratives. The course culminates in a final Pitch Day with real angel investors and VCs, bridging classroom learning directly with the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Methodology
I equip students with analytical tools necessary to rigorously explore organizational phenomena. My curriculum covers causal inference, multilevel modeling, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) using Python and R. Through hands-on coding workshops emphasizing ethical data use and practical interpretation, I build students' confidence and capability in conducting robust, transparent empirical research.
Collaboration
I am deeply committed to phenomenon-driven research and practice-oriented teaching. While primarily a quantitative scholar, I actively embrace mixed-method collaborations to unpack complex organizational dynamics, from creative breakdowns in entrepreneurial teams to human-AI co-evaluation in patent systems.
I bring this real-world focus into the classroom and industry. Drawing on my professional background, I have designed tailored leadership training programs for global enterprises, e.g., Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, and GSK. Additionally, I have co-authored business cases on leading technology innovators, such as WeChat and 3DMed, highlighting organizational agility and leadership in rapidly evolving markets.
Let's Collaborate!
I welcome opportunities to connect rigorous academic research with pressing organizational challenges. If you are a scholar or practitioner exploring the intersections of creativity, proactivity, leadership, or human-AI collaboration, I would be thrilled to connect and explore how we might learn together.