Experts

Michael Lenox

Fast Facts

  • Academic co-director, Project on Democracy and Capitalism
  • Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business
  • Special advisor to the dean for strategic initiatives, Darden School of Business
  • Expertise on technology strategy and policy, innovation and entrepreneurship, business strategy, public policy

Areas Of Expertise

  • Science and Technology
  • Economic Issues
  • Infrastructure
  • Jobs and Economy
  • Governance
  • Leadership

Michael J. Lenox is a faculty senior fellow at the Miller Center, where he serves as an academic co-director of the Project on Democracy and Capitalism. His primary appointment is as the Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. From 2016-2023, he served as Darden's senior associate dean and chief strategy officer and is currently special advisor to the dean for strategic initiatives.

From 2008 to 2016, Lenox served as associate dean of innovation programs and academic director of Darden's Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He helped found and served as the inaugural president of the multiple-university Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability. 

Before arriving at UVA in 2008, Lenox served as a tenured associate professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and as an assistant professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Harvard University, Oxford University, and IMD. 

Lenox earned his PhD in technology management and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS and MS in systems engineering from the University of Virginia.

Lenox's research has appeared in more than 30 refereed academic publications and has been cited in dozens of media outlets including The New York Times, the Financial Times, and The Economist. He is the author of five books including his 2023 release, Strategy in the Digital Age, from Stanford University Press. Since 2021, he has been the co-host of the podcast “Good Disruption.”

In 2009, Lenox was recognized as a Faculty Pioneer by the Aspen Institute and as the top strategy professor under 40 by the Strategic Management Society. In 2011, he was named one of the top 40 business professors under 40 by Poets & Quants. 

Lenox's primary expertise is in the domain of technology strategy and policy. He is broadly interested in the role of innovation and entrepreneurship for economic growth and firm competitive success. In particular, he explores the business strategy and public policy drivers of the direction of innovative activity. Lenox also has a longstanding interest in the interface between business strategy and public policy as it relates to the natural environment. Recent work includes the books Can Business Save the Earth? (2018) and The Decarbonization Imperative (2021), both from Stanford University Press.

Michael Lenox News Feed

“I’m a little surprised at this point there hasn’t been the next thing.”
Michael Lenox New York Times
How might new uses of artificial intelligence (AI) affect democratic institutions and capitalist economic structures in the short and long term? Michael Lenox, professor of business administration at the UVA Darden School of Business and academic director of the Miller Center's Project on Democracy and Capitalism, and Philip Bourne, dean of the UVA School of Data Science, discuss the potentially transformative effects of AI on democratic capitalism.
Michael Lenox Miller Center Presents
Darden Professor Michael Lenox, author of "Strategy in the Digital Age," offers five significant ways that digital technologies are fundamentally changing the basis of competition in many industries.
Michael Lenox UVA Darden Ideas To Action
“Non-stars are right to worry,” Mike Lenox, another Darden School professor and a senior faculty fellow at the Miller Center, said. A lot of these unfamous musicians aren’t making songs that people choose to listen to. Instead, they’re composing background music for commercials, or the song that plays while you’re on hold with the phone company. It would be easy, Lenox said, for companies to just have AI compose those songs.
Michael Lenox UVA Today
In this episode, we discuss some of the key insights from Mike's latest book, "Strategy in the Digital Age: Mastering Digital Transformation." We talk about why digital transformation is changing the nature of competition and why digital disruption is transformation's evil twin. We also emphasize the importance of addressing ethical and legal challenges for responsible digital transformation, and finish with a few key lessons for business leaders.
Michael Lenox Agiledrop
Artificial intelligence is all the rage. Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 in November, news commentators and business pontificators can’t seem to stop talking about the imminent disruption due to generative AI and large-language models. Business leaders from all sectors are asked about their plans for generative AI on earnings calls and in press conferences. What is an executive or investor to do?
Michael Lenox UVA Darden Ideas To Action