Robert DeFillippi, PhD, Director
Professor of Management 

Robert DeFillippi is Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Innovation and Change Leadership at the Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University.  Additionally,  Dr.  DeFillippi is Academic Director for the Innovation and Design Management concentration in the Executive MBA program, Suffolk University. Dr. DeFillippi is an international scholar in innovation and he has held visiting scholar appointments at  Imperial College of London, Cass Business School (London),  the Center for Research in Innovation Management at University of Sussex and Polytechnico di Milano. Dr. DeFillippi holds an MA, M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale University in Organization Studies.

His research, teaching and consulting practice focuses on creative collaborations and knowledge-based perspectives on innovation.  DeFillippi’s most recent scholarly book Knowledge At Work:  Creative Collaborations in the Global Economy  (2006, Blackwell Press, Oxford, UK) draws upon his past research on these topics.  He is the author of over forty scholarly journal publications and seven scholarly books and numerous book chapters and conference papers.  He is currently Associate Editor for the International Journal of Management Reviews, the official journal of the British Academy of Management. 

His current research is focusing on several broad themes:  How can organizations co-produce knowledge and innovative solutions with their customers? How can innovation service projects be organized to maximize the sharing of relevant knowledge by project teams and their clientele and how can the knowledge created from past project engagements be leveraged in future project engagements with the same customer or new customers? Dr. DeFillippi is participating in several major international and local  research projects in a wide variety of business to business service industries  to address these questions.

Colette Dumas, PhD, Director
Professor of Organizational Behavior
 Director, Center for Innovation and Change Leadership, and Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship.

Dr. Colette Dumas earned her Ph.D. in Human and Organization Systems and a Masters Degree in Organizational Development from The Fielding Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California. Dr. Dumas also trained in the prestigious Organization Development Program at the National Training Laboratories, in Bethel, Maine. She is a Full Professor at Suffolk University’s Sawyer School of Management, as well as an international scholar, having taught and pursued her research at the University of Quebec at Montreal, McGill University, l’Universidad Autonomo de Guererro, Mexico, and the Warsaw School of Economics, She was recently awarded a Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant for her innovative teaching by Suffolk University’s Center for Teaching Excellence.

Dr. Dumas has served as a consultant and has trained personnel in leading banks and financial institutions, healthcare, and pharmaceutical companies, universities and not for profit organizations as well. Her lengthy client list includes American Express, Fidelity Investments, Bank of America, The Boston Globe, Gillette, Sovereign Bank, Boston Scientific, Harvard University, MIT, John Hancock, Comverse Technologies, State Street Global Advisors, General Services Administration of the Federal Government, Stop & Shop, Aramark Corp. (Royal Ahold), Genzyme, Celanese, Investors Bank and Trust, and JP Morgan Chase, among others.

Dr. Dumas works with teams to develop effective change leadership programs, build innovative capabilities, and foster collaboration. She designs initiatives that lead to highly effective engagement and sustainable results. Her creative action learning program was cited as an enterprise best practice by the CEO of Bank of America, when she worked with the bank.

Her change leadership work with several well-known family-owned businesses has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal.
Over the course of her career, Dr. Dumas has been awarded over $800,000 in research grants by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to pursue her scholarly inquiry.  She is the author of over 45 publications, a book and six book chapters. Dr. Dumas founded the Center for Innovation and Change Leadership at Suffolk University to help organizations develop innovative and collaborative change leadership programs and practices.