Natascha Camille Bolden
A self-described “conductor of life experiences, skills and talents” to support sustainable innovation, continuous learning and improvement in life and business, Natascha Camille Bolden is a strategist committed to improving the quality of decision making through the development and cultivation of data informed processes and systems. Natascha has spent over 15 years honing her skills in research methodologies, government analytics, organizational development, sustainable innovation and group dynamics through formal education, independent research projects and teaching English to students of foreign languages in the United States and abroad. Natascha has also served as a singer, actress, composer and music director for community theater productions.
Natascha is a proud alum of Xavier University of Louisiana; California State University, San Bernardino; and Johns Hopkins University where she received a Bachelor of Science in Psychology; Master of Arts in National Security Studies and a graduate certificate in Government Analytics respectively.
Natascha successfully defended her dissertation research on the influence of creativity and knowledge integration on team innovation effectiveness, using an agent-based computational model of honey bee foraging activity, in fulfillment of a PhD in Business Psychology at the Chicago School, Washington D.C campus in June 2025!
Natascha loves to read, watch great movies (from Disney to action thrillers!), visit botanical gardens, museums, local art festivals and national parks. She spends a lot of time learning and creating new things, volunteering and visiting diverse nature spots in Virginia and neighboring states.
Staying Alive: Does Knowledge Integration or Team Creativity Drive Resiliency in Hierarchical Teams?
Abstract
Military teams are taught to navigate stressors under pressure through mental readiness training, but the ability to “broaden one’s box of possibilities” through divergent thinking has not been thoroughly explored. Lateral thinking readiness is the capacity to use both convergent (focused) and divergent (diffuse) thinking to successfully solve problems and adapt in challenging environments. Team innovation effectiveness in the context of resilience requires the ability to think laterally, flexibly switching from one side of the brain to the other when the need arises. Lateral thinking allows team members to systematically adapt to diverse conditions, learn from mistakes and develop new ways to achieve desired outcomes. Both non-creative (convergent) and creative (divergent) ideas can lead to innovative adaptive resilience, but convergent thinking alone can take much longer to get there without the catalyzing influence of divergent thought. Theories, analytic methodologies, and tools that explore and assess how convergent and divergent knowledge flows influence innovative resilience are lacking in the literature. Although creativity in isolation is often known as the seed of innovation, other variables may play a more prominent or equally influential role in the systematic selection and implementation of ideas that promote innovative adaptive resilience. This mixed-methods exploratory sequential study uses honey bee foraging as a proxy for hierarchical teams to explore the moderating influence of knowledge integration and team creativity on team innovation effectiveness. In an agent-based computational model of honey bee foraging activity, bee agents utilized knowledge the most to achieve desired collection outcomes over time in challenging foraging environments. Knowledge, when employed by bees who quickly adapted in novel ways to challenging computational scenarios, increased innovative adaptive resilience over time.
