Yeun Joon Kim of the University of Cambridge and Junha Kim of the Ohio State University conducted a field experiment at a Korean health-food company in which they assessed the top-down, bottom-up, and lateral feedback that product developers received during quarterly performance evaluations. Two months later they examined how each person’s supervisor rated his or her creativity in the intervening time. They found that people reviewed negatively by a manager or a peer showed low levels of creativity—but for managers critiqued by a lower-ranking employee, the opposite was true. Their conclusion: A subordinate’s criticism makes you more creative.

A version of this article appeared in the March–April 2020 issue of Harvard Business Review.