PDW: Growing a Community Effectually

Overview

Effectuation has emerged in last two decades as an alternative framework to explain how entrepreneurs make decisions in the face of uncertainty. Predicated in marshalling available resources within reach, and prioritizing actions instead of planning or forecasting, effectuation emerged as a powerful concept to researchers, educators, and practitioners.

In this workshop, we wish explore issues associated with growing a community effectually using as a case in point our experience within the Society for Effectual Action. We will explore questions such as:

• How to Manage Opposing Goals of Rigor and Relevance?
• How to Organize a Global Network?
• What Amount of Structure Facilitates Co-creation?
• How Can We Rethink and Redo the Ordinary?

The highlight of the workshop with be a group activity entitled “Il Mercato Napolitano: Co-Creative Shaping of the Future” in which is designed to connect the available means and affordable loss of individuals with co-creators who also take action to shape the shared future in an area of personal importance.

Additionally, we will set the stage by briefly present effectuation to those not familiar with the concept and a general summary of the 7th Effectuation Conference (scheduled for November 14th-15th, 2022).

Target group

This workshop will appeal to a large group of participants. Academics will be interested in learning about the latest research in effectuation. Having just hosted the Effectuation Conference in the days preceding the RENT Conference, we will present a short overview of the latest developments. Further, practitioners, which often include academics who double as entrepreneurship support managers in the ecosystem as well as consultants working with large organizations, will be attracted to the practical nature of the workshop and the chance to learn as well as offer advice on how to advance research and practice on this topic.

Relation to conference theme

This year’s RENT Conference theme is Re-thinking entrepreneurship after the crisis, a pertinent question demanding an urgent and targeted answer within our community. Thinking effectually in any domain of human activity is an alternative way to deal with the uncertainty associated with the aftermath of the current crisis. We contend that growing a community effectually not only will be useful but also necessary to create cognitive infrastructure, whether in research or education or practice to tackle this and other future crises. This is even more pertinent to a world growing in novelty and complexity both of which are closely related to pandemics, climate change, war and migration. In fact, the effectual worldview argues that there may be no such thing as “after the crisis” since true uncertainty encompasses the possibility of crises as ever-present, yet simply unknowable in advance.

Organizers

Tiago Ratinho is Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship at IESEG School of Management (Paris). He holds a PhD from the University of Twente (The Netherlands) and maintains a global profile conducting research and teaching in the USA, Brazil, and France on topics such as business incubation, effectuation, and technology entrepreneurship. His work can be read in international publications such as the Journal of Business Venturing, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and Technovation. Google Scholar profile: shorturl.at/opDJK

Saras D. Sarasvathy is Paul Hammaker Professor at University of Virginia’s Darden School and also holds the Jamuna Raghavan Chair in Entrepreneurship at IIM, Bangalore. A leading scholar on the cognitive basis for high-performance entrepreneurship, elaborated in the book Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise, she serves as advisor to entrepreneurship programs around the world. Effectuation is a rigorous framework for understanding how, starting with very few resources under uncertainty, entrepreneurs cocreate valuable new futures without having to predict them. Relevant multimedia materials from around the world and a co-authored textbook Effectual Entrepreneurship can be found at www.effectuation.org. Sarasvathy’s scholarly work has been published in leading journals in economics, ethics and management and has won several awards from the Academy of Management (including the Foundational Paper Award) and the American Marketing Association. Babson College in the US and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have recognized her contributions to entrepreneurship education with honorary doctorates and Fortune Small Business magazine named her one of top 18 entrepreneurship professors. Additionally, the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers presented their Legacy Award to her in 2019. Most recently, Sarasvathy is the winner of the 2022 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. Under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon, Sarasvathy received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.

Glen Wheatley teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in international entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership, and corporate social responsibility as an adjunct academic at the University of Adelaide. He started working with Saras Sarasvathy in 2020, seeking to strengthen the already highly diverse and energetic global network of the Society for Effectual Action and is now co-authoring the third edition of Effectual Entrepreneurship with Saras Sarasvathy. Being a passionate and curious learner, his keen interest in applying cutting-edge blended learning methodologies comes from extensive coursework with Harvard Business School Online. His entrepreneurship and innovation experience is extensive, having co-founded an angel-financed start-up in Germany, and continues to serve in various start-ups as cofounder, advisor, board member and angel investor. Glen’s corporate career took him on project and long-term assignments in Europe, Australasia, and the Americas, including Greater China, Germany and Mexico in manufacturing and services. He now runs the boutique strategy advisory firm Best Solutions International. Glen is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and holds a BA (University of Michigan); MBA (Thunderbird School of Global Management); Graduate Certificate in Science and Technology Commercialisation, and a Master of Applied Innovation and Entrepreneurship (University of Adelaide).

Participation

Participation in the PDW is free, but participants need to be ECSB members or registered for the RENT 2022 Conference in order to join.