Saras D. Sarasvathy is Paul M. Hammaker Professor of Business Administration, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. She is one of the world’s most influential thinkers in entrepreneurship and the originator of effectuation – a globally acclaimed framework for understanding how expert entrepreneurs create new ventures and markets under uncertainity. Professor Sarasvathy came to academia after co-founding and running five ventures across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and has been named one of the top 18 entrepreneurship professors by Fortune Small Business magazine.In 2022, the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum and the Research Institute of Industrial Economics awarded her the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research – the highest honour in the field worldwide. In 2023, she delivered the Schumpeter Lecture on “Innovation in Enterprise” at the European Union’s SME Assembly. She has also received the Legacy Impact Award from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centres. Professor Sarasvathy holds honorary doctorates from four universities across the US, India, China, and Sweden, and named professorship at IIM Bangalore, Nankai University, and Chalmers University. Her doctoral thesis was supervised by Herbert Simon, the 1978 Nobel Laureate in conomics.

Professor Sarasvathy’s book Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise (Edward Elgar, 2008) was nominated for the academy of Management’s Terry Book Award, and her co-authored textbook Effectual Entrepreneurship(Routledge, 2016) won the Gold Medal at the2012 Axiom Business Book Awards. Her scholarly work has earned multiple honours from the Academy of Management and the American Marketing Association. Her 2011 Inc. magazine article “How Great Entrepreneurs Think” is one of the publication’s most shared articles ever.