Good Disruption
Good Disruption is hosted by UVA Darden School of Business Dean Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Professor Mike Lenox. They discuss cutting edge technologies and practices and give their opinion on how it affects both markets and society. Is it a good disruption, a bad disruption, or even no disruption at all? Please subscribe and join us for new episodes on the first Monday of each month.
Episodes
The promise of AI agents to increase productivity has raised important questions about the future of work. But the potential threat of these agents goes beyond job loss.
In July, OpenAI’s own agents broke out of the testing sandbox, made their way to the internet, and hacked Hugging Face. Since then, AI companies have been disclosing more events where agents conducted inappropriat...
Prediction markets are everywhere. From sports and elections to questions about interest rates, regulation, and the future of the economy. Even entertainment is getting into the game: now trading, the Big Brother Season 28 winner.
After accurately predicting the 2024 U.S. presidential election, platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have surged in popularity, generating billions in trades...
The human brain is the most powerful network ever built: 86 billion neurons connected by more than 100 trillion synapses, enabling us to think, learn, and adapt. What happens when those connections break?
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) use sensors to translate brain signals into action, helping restore movement, communication, and independence by bypassing damaged neural pathways. Onc...
What's more American than watching a baseball game in the stands on a hot summer day? Well, one disruptor has put a new spin on the ball, creating their own mix of competitive baseball with carnival style entertainment that makes the fans part of the game instead of just spectators. It's called Banana Ball and the team that started it all is the Savannah Bananas. Jared Orton is the President of Banana Ball, and he joins Yael and Mi...
When you think of energy storage what comes to mind – batteries. But what if you need to store 1 GW of power (roughly 700,000 homes) over days, weeks, or a whole season? This is increasingly becoming a reality with an electric grid stretched by data center demand. Your traditional Li-Ion battery won’t cut it. It will require large-scale systems built to store and discharge massive amounts of...
Yael and Mike talk with Faraj Aalaei, Founder and CEO of Cognichip about his 40-year journey from product engineer to successful entrepreneur. Just starting on your entrepreneurship journey – Faraj offers some great advice!
Cognichip is revolutionizing semiconductor design through its innovative Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI®) technology, aiming to make chip development f...
Mike and Yael kick off a new disruptor series with NBA legend Ralph Sampson (UVA '83). Hard working and humble, Ralph shares his lessons for succeeding on and off the court.
Make sure to visit Ralph’s latest venture Milk and Honey for some Southern cuisine when you visit Charlottesville.
Chime, Venmo, Robinhood, Stripe – odds are you are using at least one of these Fintech apps. The reality is these companies won’t put companies like JP Morgan Chase out of business but in some pockets of the world, and with some customer segments, they are chipping away at market share. Some say traditional banking is ripe for disruption especially in the age if AI. What might that look li...
Mike and Yael catch up with Darden Professor Tim Laseter following his trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. From robots to beauty tech to smart glasses, the show features the latest in cutting edge new tech. What’s new, scalable, or hype?
Our fourth season kicks off with a mini course on disruptive innovation. What is it and what are the markers of a major technological shift? Mike and Yael give a brief Disruption 101 and explore whether disruptions are inherently good or bad, considering both the immediate negative effects and the long-term positive outcomes. They also discuss the role of government, venture capital, and other stakeholders in fostering innovation.
As we end our third season, Yael and Mike reflect on the disruptive technologies explored over the last year. It was an interesting mix of good, bad, and no disruption calls. Do they feel the same now about disruptive potential that they did when each episode first aired? What’s coming in 2026? Don’t miss this recap and send the Good Disruption team your ideas at duffr@darden.virginia.edu.
Large language models (LLMs) offer powerful opportunities for automation, creativity, and knowledge access. With 800 million people using ChatGPT alone, LLMs are drastically changing the way we interact and operate as a society. No question, this is one of the biggest disruptions of our lifetime; but is it a good one?
We’re LIVE from DC Tech Connect, Batten Institute’s ...
Imagine ordering food from Door Dash and it’s delivered to your doorstep within minutes, not by a driver, but a drone. For residents in Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs, this became reality this past summer. And customer delivery isn’t the only industry being disrupted by drones. From precision agriculture to precision battlefield strikes, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is changing the game.
...Serena Williams recently made headlines for her promotion of GLP-1 medications. The tennis super star is one of a growing list of celebrities turning to GLP-1s, drugs originally developed to treat patients with Type II diabetes and obesity, to help with weight loss.
Off-label use of these medications is rapidly expanding, disrupting a fitness industry built on helping people lose weight...
AI requires data, lots of it. Tech companies are rapidly building new data centers to house it, which will require massive amounts of electricity. How do we power them and stay on track with our emission reduction goals?
An unlikely candidate is emerging – nuclear energy. But it’s not the reactor of the 60s that is being built. Small modular nuclear reactors ...
If you ask Marvel Comics fans about quantum physics, they might reference time travel, multiverse, quantum realm, and Dr. Strange. Ideas of science fiction. Yet, for decades we have used quantum physics to power MRI machines, solar panels, and lasers. More recently, big tech companies have entered a race to quantum supremacy, where quantum computers surpass silicon-based super computers in speed and com...
Imagine testing a new medical device without putting someone on an operating table. Or experimenting with new autonomous capabilities without placing a car on the road.
Computer simulations have been used for decades to predict outcomes but now, digital twins create virtual environments that not only mirror their real-world counterparts but respond to real-time data to yiel...
From Wall-E and the Iron Giant to I Robot and Terminator, Hollywood has portrayed robots as friendly and misunderstood but also a technology to be feared if left in the wrong hands. Society has been fascinated with the idea of robots, ever since the term was introduced in the 1920s science fiction play “Rossum’s Universal Robots”. Today, humanoid robots are being designed not onl...
In their end-of-year wrap-up, UVA Darden School of Business professors Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Mike Lenox discuss the impact of AI, and the rise of digital keys and AI in household use. They also discuss the future of cryptocurrency, the rapid adoption of autonomous vehicles, the increasing popularity of electric vehicles, and revisit the potential of digital fashion and vertical farming. The Good Disruption Podcast wishes all of...
From “hanging chads” to claims of “rigged” Dominion voting machines, the technological improvements to voting technology aimed at improving efficiency and securing trust in the electoral process have been marred in controversy.
Yet, more countries around the world are shifting to electronic voting. In the U.S., most votes will be counted using a touch...
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