Michael Lenox

Education: B.S., M.S., University of Virginia; Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Lenox, is University Professor and Tayloe Murphy Professorship in Business Administration. He also holds an appointment as a Professor of Public Policy (by courtesy) at the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He teaches the core MBA strategy course and an MBA elective on Strategy in the Digital Age, among other offerings. He serves as a Special Advisor to the Dean leading special projects.  In 2023, he was asked by UVA’s President to serve as the inaugural Donna & Richard Tadler University Chair of Entrepreneurship and to lead a new Pan-University Entrepreneurship Initiative as a Special Advisor to the Provost. In addition, he is a Senior Faculty Fellow for the UVA Miller Center where he is an Academic Director for the Program on Democracy and Capitalism. From 2016 to 2023, he served as the Senior Associate Dean and Chief Strategy Officer for the Darden School. From 2008 to 2016, he 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. 

Prior to joining Darden in 2008, Professor Lenox was a tenured professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, where he served as the area coordinator for Fuqua's Strategy Area and the faculty director and founder of Duke's Corporate Sustainability Initiative. He received his Ph.D. in Technology Management and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999 and the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia. Professor Lenox has served as an assistant professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and as a visiting professor at Stanford University, Harvard University, Oxford University and IMD.

Professor Lenox's research has appeared in over thirty refereed academic publications and has been cited in numerous media outlets including The New York Times, the Financial Times and The Economist. He has published five books including, “Strategy in the Digital Age” (2023), "The Decarbonization Imperative" (2021), and "Can Business Save the Earth" (2018) all from Stanford University Press, and “The Strategist’s Toolkit” (2013) from Darden Business Publishing.  In 2009, he 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. 

Professor 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 and technology transitions such as those being driven by digital transformation and decarbonization.  Professor Lenox has a long-standing interest in the interface between business strategy and public policy as it relates to the natural environment.