Saras Sarasvathy

Education: B.Com., University of Bombay, India; MSIA, Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University

Professor Saras D. Sarasvathy is a member of the Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Ethics area. In addition to MBA and doctoral courses in entrepreneurship at Darden, she teaches in doctoral programs in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Sarasvathy is the recipient of the 2022 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, the highest recognition for research in the field of entrepreneurship awarded by the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum (Entreprenörskapsforum) and the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN).

Other recognitions for her contributions to teaching and practice include:

• Fortune Small Business magazine’s top 18 entrepreneurship professors.
• Mead-Colley Honored Faculty from UVA for teaching excellence.
• Legacy Impact Award from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers

Universities around the world have also recognized Sarasvathy’s contributions to entrepreneurship research and education by awarding her the following professorships and honorary doctorates:

• Jamuna Raghavan Chair at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore
• University Chair from Nankai University in Tianjin, China
• Haniel Professor, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
• Jubilee professorship from Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden
• Babson College Doctor of Humane Letters, 2013
• Chalmers University, Doctor of Humane Letters, 2022

A leading scholar on the cognitive basis for high-performance entrepreneurship, Sarasvathy has served on the editorial boards of top management journals and as Associate Editor of top entrepreneurship journals. Her scholarly work has won several awards, including the 2009 and 2015 Gerald E. Hills Best Paper Awards from the American Marketing Association and the Foundational Paper Award from the Academy of Management in 2017. Her book Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise was nominated for the 2009 Terry Book Award by the Academy of Management.

The research program based on effectuation involves over a hundred scholars from around the world whose published and working papers can be found at www.effectuation.org. Sarasvathy has also developed several cases and other instructional materials to teach effectuation. Her co-authored textbook, Effectual Entrepreneurship won the Gold Medal in the 2012 Axiom Business Book Awards.

Sarasvathy serves on the board of Lending Tree (Nasdaq TREE), Upekkha, a SaaS accelerator in Bangalore, India, as well as on advisory boards for academic institutions in Europe and Asia. In addition to a master's degree in industrial administration, Sarasvathy received her Ph.D. in information systems from Carnegie Mellon University. Her thesis on entrepreneurial expertise was supervised by Herbert Simon, 1978 Nobel Laureate in Economics. Click here for her SSRN Author Page, her TEDx talk, a video interview with Big Think, a webinar from the World Bank and one from the Academy of Management.