Tech Diplomacy Global Institute People

Portrait of Prof. Ajay Agrawal

Prof. Ajay Agrawal

Professor, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Canada
Canada
Tech Diplomacy Global 50

Biography

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, which he joined as an assistant professor in 2003. He founded the Creative Destruction Lab in 2012, a seed-stage program for science-based companies, and co-founded The Next 36, now part of NEXT Canada.

He co-founded the AI and robotics companies Kindred, acquired by Ocado in 2020, and Sanctuary, and is a co-founder and partner of Intrepid Growth Partners. With Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb he co-wrote Prediction Machines (2018) and Power and Prediction (2022). He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a faculty affiliate of the Vector Institute. Born in Vancouver and a graduate of the University of British Columbia, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2022.

Tech Diplomacy Global 50

2026
Tech Diplomacy Global 50 card of Ajay AgrawalTech Diplomacy Global 50 card of Ajay Agrawal
Professor, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Canada