Entrepreneurship & innovation

Corporate innovation is crucial for value creation. What does that have to do with gender diversity? A new global study shows the real influence and impact of gender diversity on boards; when it comes to greater balance, so come greater innovation outcomes. And the effects may be evident sooner than you think.

Raising venture capital isn’t for the faint of heart, but the challenges are magnified for female founders. Professors Saras Sarasvathy and Elena Loutskina share insights on barriers women face to raising risk capital and how to overcome them.

Disruption is essential to economic growth and societal advancement. But a backlash is brewing, and some worry that the pace of new technologies leads to unintended consequences that are too great. Professor Mike Lenox discusses the pros and cons of disruption and the reason the right kind of aggressive innovation is critical to saving the world.

MIT Professor Cynthia Breazeal, a keynote speaker at a recent Psychology of Technology Conference led by Darden Professor Roshni Raveendhran, shares insights about a new generation of social robots and their impact on human flourishing.

Is coding an essential job skill of the future? Should MBA students learn to code? Darden Professor Alex Cowan answers five questions on the building blocks of much of our digital world.

Studies show that gender bias in the venture capital (VC) industry hurts both female founders and has negative financial consequences for VC firms. Darden Professors Morela Hernandez and Roshni Raveendhran show how algorithm-aided, data-driven approaches can help investors mitigate bias and make better and more equitable funding decisions.

Health care in the United State is wildly complicated and remarkably expensive. Paul Matherne (EMBA ’10), a Darden lecturer, pediatric cardiologist and acting chief medical officer of UVA Health, looks at the misaligned incentives at the heart of U.S. health care system.

Odds of survival are slim when it comes to startups. One essential variable that goes into the equation: geography. New research supported by Darden’s Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation has produced the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem quality index, which measures the health of a location based on five key characteristics.

With a global population projected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050, food production will require innovative new methods for producing more food, more sustainably. Here, Darden Ideas to Action highlights one company trying to do just that: Beanstalk, founded by brothers Mike and Jack Ross in 2017.

The myth of the iconic founder amplified by the media is as misleading as it is seductive. David Touve, senior director of ventures at UVA Darden’s Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, dispels some of the most common misconceptions about entrepreneurs.