How can business leaders respond to the growing uncertainty? How can they make decisions and act? Darden Professor Saras Sarasvathy, one of the world’s leading authorities on entrepreneurial decision-making, shares tips on how to thrive amid unpredictability.
Topic
Entrepreneurship
Economic and social advancement require leaders who embrace an entrepreneurial outlook and a commitment to innovation. Darden thought leadership emphasizes that an entrepreneurial mindset is about more than starting a new business venture; it encompasses the opportunity-seizing and action-oriented behaviors essential for sustained growth in organizations of all sizes.
Meet the 22 founding teams selected for this year’s University of Virginia’s i.Lab Incubator are choosing to transform ambiguity into opportunity as they develop innovative solutions to pressing challenges and market needs.
After 22 years of service at Darden, Sarasvathy will retire at the end of the 2026 academic year. Through her teaching and research, Sarasvathy has shaped a generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs while producing some of Darden’s most influential and widely recognized thought leadership.
At a recent First Coffee nearly $100,000 in funding was announced for aspiring CEOs ready to take the leap into entrepreneurship.
As many founders know, navigating a pivot in real time is far from straightforward. Darden Professor Saras Sarasvathy, an authority on the cognitive basis of high-performance entrepreneurship, provides tools and mechanisms to help determine or create what is worth pursuing.
When the Thoroughbred filly Ivy Garden crossed the finish line first — at 11 to 1 odds to win a $55,000 Maiden race — last September at Colonial Downs, the celebration was so ebullient it not only solidified friendships but also expanded the fledgling venture of Ivy Garden’s part-owners, Darden students IV Hendrix (Class of 2026) and Xavier Vecchio (Class of 2026).
After devoting seven years to driving Anheuser-Busch InBev toward its carbon emissions, renewable energy and sustainable packaging targets, Virginia Covo (MBA ’16) is setting aside her corporate role to take on a new one: entrepreneur.
Block’s recent 40% layoff shook the tech world, partly because CEO Jack Dorsey cited AI as the sole reason for the cuts. Omar Garriot shares insights into the tech landscape in this critical moment, and discusses what aspiring tech entrepreneurs can learn from it.
A Part-Time MBA student who makes his living as an investor decides to treat Darden the same way he treats any serious position — as something worth owning, not just consuming.
For Waymo, Google’s self-driving car unit, each trip is a real-world test of whether its business model holds up. The bigger question, according to Interim Dean Mike Lenox, is: who will capture the value — the companies that build the vehicles, or those that write the software that drives them?
