Ajay Agrawal

Ajay Agrawal is the Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. In addition, he is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA and Faculty Affiliate at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Toronto, Canada.

Professor Agrawal is founder of the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a not-for-profit program for early-stage, science-based companies. CDL’s mission is to enhance the commercialization of science for the betterment of humankind. CDL operates sites at five Canadian universities as well as at Imperial College London, HEC Paris, Texas A&M, University of Wisconsin-Madison, The University of Washington, ESMT Berlin, and The University of Tartu in Estonia, Monash Business School in Australia, Bocconi University in Italy, and IESE Business School in Spain.

CDL launched a new program in April 2020, CDL-Recovery, in response to the global pandemic. The program included two streams: 1) public health, 2) economic recovery. Then in May 2020, CDL launched the CDL Vision Council. The Vision Council’s mission: Identify the primary problems at the root of the crisis and accelerate technology-driven solutions that will have a first order impact on stimulating economic activity, restoring or creating jobs, and enhancing society such that human civilization emerges stronger and more stable than before the COVID-19 crisis began. Professor Agrawal serves at the Founding Chair of the Vision Council.