Professional Development Workshops at RENT 2025

Facilitators

Antje Bierwisch (MCI)
Franziska Günzel-Jensen (Aarhus University) (Chair)
Hans Lundberg (Tecnológico de Monterrey, EGADE Business School) (Chair)
Marcela Ramírez-Pasillas (Tecnológico de Monterrey, IFEM)
Kathleen Randerson (Audencia)
Julia Vögele (MCI)

As entrepreneurs race to develop breakthrough AI systems, revolutionary energy solutions, new ways of addressing pressing social needs, and countless new market offers, a critical question emerges: Are we creating the futures we actually want? Despite the recognized capacity of entrepreneurship to drive transformative change, there remains a significant gap in how entrepreneurs could systematically envision and create truly desirable futures rather than simply focus on launching ventures and pursuing profit. This PDW addresses this critical gap by exploring synergies between entrepreneurship and futures studies—two fields that share a fundamental commitment to creating new realities but have remained largely disconnected. While entrepreneurship excels at driving change, its potential for creating radically different, desirable futures remains underexplored. Futures studies offers rigorous tools and sophisticated frameworks for designing alternative futures—tools with significant untapped potential for entrepreneurship practice and research.

Format

We begin by mapping the current landscape of entrepreneurship and futures studies research, identifying key concepts and unexplored intersections. Participants then engage in structured roundtable discussions, working through guided exercises to discover how futures thinking methodologies can enhance and expand their entrepreneurship research agendas. The session concludes with networking opportunities and exploration of collaboration pathways, including publication opportunities in a Special Issue in the journal Futures.

Audience

This PDW welcomes participants across the spectrum of experience and interest—from those simply curious to those being topic expert. As examples only, you might be a:

• Researcher interested in exploring how futures thinking can expand your entrepreneurship research through new theoretical and methodological frameworks and collaboration opportunities.
• Educator keen to develop curriculum that moves beyond traditional profit-focused entrepreneurship to teach students how to envision desirable futures.

Key Takeaways/Outcomes

• Novel research directions emerging from the underexplored intersections between entrepreneurship and futures studies.
• Practical methodological frameworks for integrating futures thinking approaches into your entrepreneurship research practice.
• Expanded network of like-minded colleagues for ongoing collaboration and knowledge exchange.

Register: https://link.webropolsurveys.com/EP/D3EFD43685D8E765

Facilitators

Kate Sullivan, Heriot-Watt University

This interactive workshop introduces an innovative, game-based approach to engaging, inclusive entrepreneurship education using a purpose-designed tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), inspired by systems like Dungeons & Dragons. The design draws on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and neurodivergent-friendly practices, offering multiple entry points, narrative scaffolding, and emotional safety mechanisms.

Participants will be immersed in a dynamic, collaborative learning experience designed to explore core entrepreneurship concepts (e.g., ethical decision-making, effectuation, identity complexity in business, technostress). Together, you will collaboratively navigate a range of challenges, including scanning for opportunities, managing resources, making strategic decisions, and fostering teamwork in an uncertain environment

Following gameplay, we transition into a structured debrief linking the experience to key academic concepts in business, entrepreneurship, and systems thinking and offers practical insights on how these methods can be applied in their own practice. Learning may be extended through an optional, asynchronous alternate reality game (ARG) facilitating self-guided exploration of concepts.

This workshop offers participants a novel, adaptable tool for transforming their approach to entrepreneurship education, empowering learners to thrive in a rapidly changing, interconnected world.

Expected Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

1. Understand how gamification and role-playing can foster entrepreneurial skills in diverse learning contexts.
2. Experience a participatory learning method integrating systemic and democratic entrepreneurship education principles.
3. Gain practical insights on incorporating systems thinking into entrepreneurship education.
4. Acquire tools for engaging learners in dynamic, co-created problem-solving exercises that reflect real-world challenges.

No prior experience with TTRPGs or game-based learning is required; simply come ready to have fun (and learn a bit along the way)!

Register: https://link.webropolsurveys.com/EP/7F82FDABBDA12AA4

Facilitators

Su-Hyun Berg, University of Southern Denmark
Verena Meyer, Leuphana University of Lüneburg
Simon Schmidt, University of Göttingen

Co-authoring can be tricky: Most researchers have experienced disappearing co-authors, unfair processes and responsibilities, challenges in developing a coherent storyline across authors, or a promising collaboration that ends in frustration. While co-authoring is a cornerstone of achieving impactful research, the art of co-authoring—how we as researchers work together to produce knowledge—remains underexplored. Co-authoring is a social and strategic endeavor that evolves across career stages, disciplines, and institutional contexts. Especially as the expectations for producing high-level publications become increasingly demanding, developing a good strategy for co-authoring is essential.

Join us for an exciting PDW on the art of co-authoring to explore how we can turn co-authoring into a great experience of creating something together, working intensely towards a common goal, and learning from each other’s perspectives.

Workshop-style format

This interactive workshop will feature two parts. In the first part, organizers as well as panelists will share their diverse experiences (good and bad) in co-authoring to set the stage for later group discussion. In the second part, panelists, organizers, and participants will collaboratively develop ideas how co-authoring can be improved and what standards we can define for the entrepreneurship community. This co-creation process will involve methods from design thinking paired with approaches from design science to come up with actionable knowledge on how to master the art of co-authoring. 

Audience

There are no requirements to join this PDW! As we will explore the art of co-authoring through a multi-perspective lens, we welcome researchers across all career stages.

Key takeaways

Participants will leave with:

• A deeper understanding of co-authoring dynamics
• A co-created visual board of co-authoring ‘How tos’
• New connections and potential co-author matches
• A reflection on participants’ own collaboration practices

Let’s explore and enhance the art of co-authoring together—to promote more effective, inclusive, and enjoyable academic collaboration!

Register: https://link.webropolsurveys.com/EP/F54455203EA15C97

Facilitators

Dr Trudie Murray and Dr Breda Kenny, Munster Technological University

This PDW offers educators and scholars an immersive exploration of how biomimicry – innovation inspired by nature’s time-tested strategies – can be integrated with responsible and regenerative approaches to reframe entrepreneurship education. Grounded in contemporary literature on responsible enterprise, regenerative pedagogy, and systems thinking, the session will combine interactive, nature-informed activities with critical academic dialogue. Participants will work with patterns, processes, and principles from the natural world as stimuli for rethinking entrepreneurship teaching and research.

Through the lens of biomimicry, the session will demonstrate how ecological literacy and systems thinking can be operationalised within pedagogy and research design. In connecting these nature-based methods with established responsible and regenerative entrepreneurship frameworks, participants will be invited to critically examine dominant growth-oriented models and explore alternative paradigms grounded in mutualism, circularity, and ecological restoration.

Attendees will gain practical pedagogical strategies and analytical tools – including nature-informed ideation methods, regenerative business model mapping approaches, and critical reflection frameworks – that can be adapted for curriculum innovation, scholarly inquiry, and collaborative research.  No prior experience is required, only curiosity and a commitment to reimagining entrepreneurship education for complex and uncertain futures.

Workshop format

The 2-hour PDW is divided into two parts:

• Immersive pedagogical exploration through hands-on, sensory, and nature-informed activities, alongside authentic examples from teaching practice.
• Academic dialogue and critical reflection to identify conceptual, methodological, and pedagogical priorities for advancing responsible and regenerative entrepreneurship education.

Audience

This PDW is designed for educators, researchers, and doctoral or early-career academics in entrepreneurship, innovation, and sustainability who seek to integrate ecological literacy, systems thinking, and regenerative perspectives into their teaching, curriculum design, and scholarly practice. It will also appeal to those wishing to connect with peers pursuing transformative approaches to entrepreneurship and enterprise education.

Key takeaways

• A set of experiential strategies for integrating biomimicry, ecological literacy, and systems thinking into entrepreneurship education.
• Insights into bridging responsible and regenerative entrepreneurship in curriculum design.
• Inspiration for rethinking entrepreneurship/enterprise education beyond traditional growth models.
• Opportunities to develop international collaboration and research networks in regenerative and responsible entrepreneurship education.

Register: https://link.webropolsurveys.com/EP/D2091241651D7B9C