Dr. Michael Lounsbury Roger S. Smith Professor of Business Academic Director of the eHUB Entrepreneurship Centre University of Alberta Coordinated by the Entrepreneurship and Family Business division

While much entrepreneurship teaching and research remains focused on the sources and consequences of new venture creation, there has been growing attention to conceptualizing and studying entrepreneurship in broader ways. Lounsbury and Glynn recently argued that a productive focus for cultural entrepreneurship scholarship is the study of entrepreneurial possibilities that emerge and develop in complex institutional fields—before there are opportunities to be identified and exploited. In this talk, I will discuss and elaborate on the implications of the notion of entrepreneurial possibilities for entrepreneurial research and teaching. For instance, one important implication is to unpack the earliest stages of how the orientation of individuals begins to shift towards seeing themselves as entrepreneurs. While this involves identity (re-)construction, it also involves an emancipatory process where intellectual, psychological, economic, social, institutional, or cultural constraints/barriers are overcome. With regard to teaching, I argue that to realize the full potential of entrepreneurship to enhance socio-economic well-being, address grand challenges, and foster inclusivity, I argue that entrepreneurship education ought to be reimagined as a core liberal arts domain that can broaden traditional approaches to management in a way that substantively embraces disciplinary knowledge across the social sciences and humanities.