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Ajay Agrawal

Founder, Creative Destruction Lab

AcceleratorToronto

Ajay Agrawal is a professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, where he holds the Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He founded the Creative Destruction Lab there in 2012 and co-founded Next Canada. He co-wrote Prediction Machines and was named to the Order of Canada in 2022.

Ajay hasn’t spoken on a TechTO, TechVancouver or TechWaterloo stage. This profile is here because Ajay co-founded Creative Destruction Lab, which appears in 1 talk in the archive.

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Quick answers

What is Ajay Agrawal's role at Creative Destruction Lab?

Creative Destruction Lab's announcement of his appointment to the Order of Canada, published 2022-06-29, states that Prof. Agrawal founded Creative Destruction Lab at the Rotman School in 2012. CDL's about page, checked 2026-09-19, credits the program's founding thesis to his research on commercialising university science.

What does he do at the University of Toronto?

The Rotman School's faculty page for him, checked 2026-09-19, prints his title as Professor, Strategic Management, Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and lists research on the economics of artificial intelligence, science policy, entrepreneurial finance and the geography of innovation.

What has he written?

His faculty site agrawal.ca, checked 2026-09-19, describes him as a co-author of Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence, and reproduces endorsements for the follow-up book Power and Prediction.

What else has he founded?

The Rotman School's faculty page, checked 2026-09-19, lists him as a co-founder of The Next 36 and NextAI. His site agrawal.ca, checked 2026-09-19, describes those programs as part of Next Canada, which he co-founded, and names him a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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Maintained by TechTO · facts sourced and dated · last reviewed Sep 19, 2026