Amir Sariri

Assistant Professor
Strategic Management

Education

PhD, Strategic Management, University of Toronto
Bachelor, Business, Economics & Mathematics , University of Toronto

I am an assistant professor of strategic management at Purdue University. Before joining Purdue, I founded and led the R&D group at Creative Destruction Lab, a non-profit mentoring program for technology startups. I continue to help run CDL’s Space Stream and advise its R&D team on expanding research-grade databases for entrepreneurship studies.

My research examines how information asymmetries and heterogeneous beliefs shape entrepreneurial decision-making and firm development. I study how differences in what entrepreneurs, investors, and employees know and believe about startup quality affect critical early-stage outcomes. My work reveals why seemingly implausible ideas sometimes generate extraordinary value while obvious opportunities often fail, and how structured approaches to learning can improve entrepreneurial resource allocation.

During my doctoral studies, I built a large-scale relational database on early-stage entrepreneurship, combining structured operational data with unstructured transcripts of mentor-founder interactions across 27 technological domains. This infrastructure secured $25 million from the Government of Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund and now supports a growing body of published and in-progress research across multiple institutions.

My research has been published in Management Science and American Economic Journal, featured in The Economist, Globe and Mail, and Frankfurter Allgemeine, and recognized with the Heizer Dissertation Award and the Royal Bank of Canada’s Borealis AI Fellowship.

I completed my doctoral studies at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and was a Visiting Scholar at MIT Sloan during 2025.

When not teaching or researching, I enjoy skiing, playing tennis, learning new pieces on the piano and violin, or renting a small aircraft to explore new places.

Journal Articles

Kevin Bryan, Mitch Hoffman, Amir Sariri (2026). "Information Frictions and Employee Sorting between Start-ups." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics vol. 18 (2), 369-406. | Related Website |
Amir Sariri (2025). "The Economics of Advice: Evidence from Start-up Mentoring." Management Science INFORMS (Catonsville, MD). vol. 71 (12), 10022-10046. | Related Website |

Best Empirical Paper, AOM ENT Division

Heizer Doctoral Dissertation Award in New Enterprise Development, AOM

Best Empirical Paper, AOM ENT Division

Best Paper, AOM

$10,000 Futures Fund Scholarship, Bennet Jones

$25 million Strategic Innovation Fund, Government of Canada

Entitled “CDL-AI Project,” granted to Creative Destruction Lab

$35,000 Borealis AI Graduate Fellowship, Royal Bank of Canada

University of Toronto Scholar Award

MGMT 69000 - (Spring)
PhD Seminars in Economics of Innovation: This course explores the foundations of economics of innovation. The readings include major theories of the role of innovation as an engine of economic growth, and noteworthy empirical evidence that shape our understanding of the origins and consequences of knowledge creation. The objective is to prepare doctoral students for writing novel and impactful research on topics of innovation and technology commercialization. Although there are no pre-requisites for this course, familiarity with doctoral level microeconomic theory will significantly enhance learning.
MGMT 352000 - (Spring)
Undergraduate Strategic Management: Why are some firms more successful than others? The fundamental question of strategy is how firms can attain and sustain competitive advantage. In Strategic Management, we will investigate how firms deal with the organization, management, and strategic positioning of the firm to gain long-term competitive advantage. The course introduces you to the role of the “strategic manager,” who is responsible for an organization's overall and long-term well-being. Implicitly or explicitly, every firm must define the scope of its business operations and compete against its rivals within it. Decisions about the scope of business (e.g., in what markets or industries a firm wants to compete) constitute the firm's corporate strategy. Decisions about how to compete (e.g., cost leadership or differentiation) within the chosen market(s) reflect the firm's business-level strategy. This course focuses on how a firm can formulate effective business-level and corporate-level strategies to achieve competitive advantage.

Contact

asariri@purdue.edu
Phone: (765) 494-4478
Office: KRAN 510

Quick links

Personal website

Area(s) of Expertise

Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Technology Commercialization