Dr Evy Sakellariou, Kingston University London

"Creativity and the Arts of Disguise: Switching Between Formal and Informal Channels in the Evolution of Creative Projects" 
Thursday, 25 September 2025. 10:00-11:30 Room: 656A Innovation Room Adam Smith Building

Abstract

Evy presents a dual-channel process theory of creative project evolution—showing how projects strategically switch between formal and informal organisational channels to progress—based on her co-authored article in Organization Science. Using an in-depth case of a creative communications campaign in a Fortune 500 multinational subsidiary, she shows that formal → informal shifts bypass barriers and build autonomy, while informal → formal shifts secure legitimacy and resources. Four versatile subprocesses—selective concealment, strategic use of time, leveraging hierarchical and knowledge gaps, and shared-wins framing—explain when and how switching sustains momentum in large organisations. 

As Co-Editor of the forthcoming Special Issue of Research-Technology Management on Foresighting, Imagining, and Crafting Desirable Futures, Evy offers a brief preview of five thematic areas that advance scholarship and practice in building strategic capabilities for foresight, imagination, and the making of desirable futures across individual, team, organisational, and system levels. Drawing on the issue’s theoretical contributions, she introduces the Future-Making Practices Nexus—a model showing how capabilities, strategy, and scenario evaluation intersect to enable resilient, desirable futures, translating them into present action amid today’s environmental uncertainty.

Bio

Evy’s research explores the intersections of creativity, innovation and foresight—most recently through the lenses of emerging technologies and human-led Generative AI (GenAI). She is the Founder and Chair of the think tank Women4AInnovationFutures, an incubator for new ideas and a broker of knowledge on human-centred, future-focused GenAI for female leadership. Her work has been published in FT50/World Elite and leading journals and she has led Knowledge Exchange projects on GenAI for Innovation with Unilever Global AI dept., Google Global Gen AI team, and the Kingston Large Employers Forum. She has also secured a Kingston University Kickstarter Award funding to develop her research-led GenAI app, ‘The Trusted Innovation Mentor’. She is also the PI for the contract research project with Publicis Media ‘Future Skills & Gaps Unlocked: UK Industry Foresights and Productivity Impact in the Gen AI Era’.

Previously, as an award-winning senior leader at Unilever (FTSE 100), she held country-level portfolio P&L responsibility, building deep expertise in innovation and marketing-led strategy, data-driven insights, and customer engagement. In recognition of these achievements, she was elected a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (UK) and a Fellow of the Institute of Innovation and Knowledge Exchange.

She serves as a senior faculty member on the Doctoral and Scientific Committees of the International Product Development and Management Conference (IPDMC), hosted by the European Institute of Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) in Brussels.

For further information, please contact business-seminar-series@glasgow.ac.uk.

We foster a positive and productive environment for seminars through our Code of conduct.

First published: 16 September 2025

<< 2025