Toronto – Four professors at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management have been nominated for Distinguished Achievement Awards by Thinkers50, the premier ranking of the leading management ideas of our time.
Profs. Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb were nominated together for the Digital Thinking Award. In their book Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018), they address the mystery and hype surrounding the impact of AI on business. By framing AI as a simple commodity – prediction – they show how basic economic tools can be applied to reveal AI’s enormous potential, and how it can be harnessed.
Prof. András Tilscik and his colleague Chris Clearfield were nominated for the Strategy Award for their co-authored award-winning book, Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It (Penguin Press, 2018). In it they explore the complexity and risks of organizations’ increasing reliance on computer-based systems, and propose different sets of solutions, such as designing more transparent and loosely coupled systems, encouraging dissent, and using structured decision tools.
Ajay Agrawal is the Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School. He is the founder of the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a not-for-profit program focused on helping founders transform science-based projects into massively-scalable and financeable businesses.
Joshua Gans is the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School. He is the Chief Economist of the Creative Destruction Lab.
Avi Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and Professor of Marketing at the Rotman School. He is the Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab,
András Tilcsik is the Canada Research Chair in Strategy, Organizations and Society and an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School. Chris Clearfield is the founder of System Logic, a boutique research and consulting firm. Meltdown was the winner of the National Business Book Award in Canada for the best business book published in 2018. In 2015, Profs. TIlcsik and Clearfield won the Bracken Bower Prize from McKinsey and the Financial Times, given to the best business book proposal by authors under 35, for their proposal for Meltdown.
Thinkers50 identifies, ranks and shares the very best in management ideas. Its definitive global ranking of the 50 most influential management thinkers is published every two years. The 2017 top-ranked thinker was Rotman School Dean Emeritus Roger Martin. Previous winners include Clayton Christensen, CK Prahalad, Michael Porter and Peter Drucker. Further information is available at https://thinkers50.com/.
The Rotman School of Management is part of the University of Toronto, a global centre of research and teaching excellence at the heart of Canada’s commercial capital. Rotman is a catalyst for transformative learning, insights and public engagement, bringing together diverse views and initiatives around a defining purpose: to create value for business and society. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca.
-30-
For more information:
Ken McGuffin
Manager, Media Relations
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
Voice 416.946.3818
E-mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca