Ajay Agrawal

Canadian economist

Ajay Agrawal
Born	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Academic career
Alma mater	University of British Columbia
Doctoral students	Christian Catalini
Contributions	Founder of Creative Destruction Lab

Website	agrawal.ca

Ajay K. Agrawal CM^[1] works at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management as the Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation as well as the Professor of Strategic Management.^[2]

Agrawal co-founded NEXT Canada, previously The Next 36 in 2010. He founded the Creative Destruction Lab in 2012 at the University of Toronto. Agrawal is co-founder of an annual conference, held at the University of Toronto, "Machine Learning and the Market for Intelligence." Agrawal is a co-author of the books Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence (released in 2022), and Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence (released in April 2018).^[3]

Career

Rotman School of Management

In 2003, Agrawal joined the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto as an assistant professor.^[4] Agrawal is the Academic Director of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Rotman School of Management.^[5]

NEXT Canada

In 2010, Agrawal co-founded and became the Academic Director of The Next 36, now part of NEXT Canada.^[6]

Creative Destruction Lab

Agrawal is Founder of the Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto. The Lab was founded in 2012 as a seed-stage program for science-based companies. The program has five locations in Canada including Vancouver (UBC Sauder School of Business), Calgary (Haskayne School of Business), Montreal (HEC Montréal), and Halifax, Nova Scotia (Rowe School of Business). It has three locations in the United States at the University of Washington, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.^[7]

In 2015, the Toronto Lab added a machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) stream.^[8] In 2017, the CDL launched a program focused on quantum machine learning.^[9]

Machine Learning and the Market for Intelligence

Agrawal is the conference co-chair of 'Machine Learning and the Market for Intelligence' with Shivon Zilis. Its third edition was held in October 2017 at the University of Toronto.^[10]

Kindred

Agrawal is co-founder of Kindred.^[11] The MIT Technology Review listed Kindred as one of the 50 Smartest Companies of 2017.^[12]

Publications

Agrawal has been published in the Harvard Business Review several times.^[13] as well as the Oxford University Press.^[14]

According to Google Scholar, Agrawal has been cited 16457 times.^[15] According to Social Science Research Network he has 42 scholarly papers.^[16]

Agrawal is co-author of the book Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence, with Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb. The book was released in November 2022 by the Harvard Business Review.

Agrawal is co-author of the book Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence with Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb. The book was released in April 2018 by the Harvard Business Review.

Awards and honours

Agrawal received the President's Impact Award at the University of Toronto in 2023.

Agrawal was appointed to the Order of Canada in June 2022.

Agrawal has been awarded Professor of the Year seven times by MBA classes at the Rotman School of Management, the Martin-Lang Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Distinguished Scholarly Contribution Award in 2017.^[17]

Agrawal was included in the 'Power 50' list of most influential Canadians to watch in business in The Globe and Mail's Report on Business Magazine.^[18]

His co-founded company, Kindred AI, was featured at number 29 on MIT Technology Review's 2017 list of smartest companies in the world.^[12]

References

^ "Order of Canada appointees - June 2022". 21 June 2022. Retrieved 2022-06-29.
^ "The Economics of Artificial Intelligence". McKinsey. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
^ Silcoff, Sean (17 March 2017). "How a U of T Professor is Creating High-Tech Superstars". Globe & Mail. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
^ "Ajay Agrawal". Rotman School of Management. Retrieved January 31, 2018.
^ "Ajay Agrawal". Big Think. Retrieved January 31, 2018.
^ "NextAI Venture Day 2017". Start Up Here Toronto. 30 October 2017. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
^ "Creative Destruction Lab joins UW Foster School of Business, establishing CDL-Seattle". UW. Retrieved November 1, 2021.
^ "Creative Destruction Lab is launching a quantum machine learning accelerator in Toronto". Tech Crunch. 25 May 2017. Retrieved January 31, 2018.
^ "Toronto's Creative Destruction Lab Selects First Executive Director". Tech Vibes. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
^ "Machine Learning and the Market for Intelligence 2016". Motion Metrics. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
^ "After years hidden in the background, artificial intelligence is getting pushy: Don Pittis". CBC. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
^ ^a ^b "50 Smartest Companies 2017". Technology Review. Retrieved January 31, 2018.
^ "Ajay Agrawal". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved January 31, 2018.
^ "Innovation and the Growth of Cities". Oxford University Press. Retrieved January 31, 2018.
^ "Ajay Agrawal". Google Scholar. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
^ "Ajay Agrawal". Social Science Research Network. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
^ "Creative destruction fits well with the spirit and nature of our work". Braingainmag. Retrieved January 31, 2018.
^ "The 50 most powerful people in Canadian business". Globe and Mail. 26 April 2017. Retrieved January 31, 2018.