Saint Louis University
St. Louis, MO
Primary sponsorship comes from the Kauffman Foundation with scholarship support from the Coleman Foundation and additional support from the Kern Engineering Entrepreneurship Network.
BACKGROUND
Since its start in 1987, Saint Louis University's Gateway Series for Entrepreneurship Research has promoted advances in scholarship on entrepreneurship and related disciplines. At the Gateway Conference, a general foundation is laid by the keynote speaker. The keynote address starts the meeting and provides a common frame of reference and point of departure. Work will then take place in small to medium sized groups exploring research and techniques applicable to the theme. The goal is to create an environment that maximizes opportunity for informal group discussion and provides connections and research opportunities for the participants. Other than the keynote speaker, no other Gateway participant needs to submit a paper to attend the conference.
2013 CONFERENCE THEME AND SPEAKER
The theme for the 2013 conference is: Design Thinking for Opportunity Recognition. The keynote will be in the form of a workshop on design thinking delivered by Heidi Neck of Babson College.
Opportunity recognition is at the core of the field of entrepreneurship. We have amassed an impressive body of research on the topic that has resulted in various schools of thought on how opportunities are identified and exploited. Despite this body of knowledge and our understanding of opportunity recognition, there has been little impact on the practice of identifying new opportunities.
The field of design may offer some insights and provide exciting new research directions in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship scholars are mostly born from the mother disciplines of strategy, economics, marketing, and organizational behavior; therefore, our understanding of design and its intersection with entrepreneurship is under researched and even misunderstood. Design is a process of divergence and convergence requiring skills in observation, synthesis, searching and generating alternatives, critical thinking, feedback, visual representation, creativity, problem-solving, and value creation. The practice of fundamental design principles can stimulate and accelerate opportunity recognition.
Heidi Neck will lead participants through a half-day simulation built on the principles of design thinking that can be incorporated into your own classrooms. By experiencing this design methodology for opportunity recognition during the first part of the conference, participants will be better prepared to articulate the most interesting research questions during the second half of the conference.
AGENDA
Friday, April 19 6:00pm-8:00pm Welcome Reception at Bannister House
Saturday, April 20 8:30am Check-In and Breakfast
9:00am Keynote and Simulation Part I
2:00pm Lunch
1:00pm Simulation Part II
3:00pm Design Thinking and Group Discussions
5:30pm End
Sunday, April 21 8:00am Breakfast
8:30am Continue Group Discussion
11:00am Groups Present
12:00pm Lunch
1:30pm End
FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://www.slu.edu/eweb/learn/gateway-conference/gateway-2013
If you have questions about the registration process or Coleman scholarship, please contact Jeanne Rhodes: rhodesja@slu.edu or 314-977-3850. If you have questions regarding conference content, please contact Conference Organizers Jintong Tang (jtang3@slu.edu), Sridhar Condoor (condoor@slu.edu) or Jerome Katz (katzja@slu.edu).