Saras D. Sarasvathy

Saras D. Sarasvathy is Paul Hammaker Professor at University of Virginia’s Darden School. A leading scholar on the cognitive basis for high-performance entrepreneurship, she serves as advisor to entrepreneurship programs around the world. Effectuation is a rigorous framework for understanding how entrepreneurs starting with very few resources can nonetheless create enduring ventures with high economic and social impact. Relevant multimedia materials from around the world can be found at www.effectuation.org.

Sarasvathy’s scholarly work has won several awards from the Academy of Management and the American Marketing Association. Sarasvathy has served on the editorial boards of top journals in management and entrepreneurship and Fortune Small Business magazine named her one of top 18 entrepreneurship professors. Most recently, the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers recognized her achievements through their Legacy Award in 2019.

Sarasvathy received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. Her thesis was supervised by Herbert Simon, 1978 Nobel Laureate in Economics. Before coming into academia, Sarasvathy had cofounded five ventures.