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Dear colleagues,

please join us for an exciting PDW on "Entrepreneurship under Adverse Conditions" Friday August 5th starting at 12.15.

Maija, Mandi, Ute & Friederike

Organizer: Maija Renko, U. of Illinois at Chicago
Organizer: Amanda Bullough, U. of Delaware
Organizer: Ute Stephan, Aston Business School
Organizer: Friederike Welter, IfM Bonn / U. of Siegen
Speaker: Ted Baker, Rutgers U.
Speaker: Michael Frese, National U. of Singapore
Speaker: Susanna Khavul, UTA/LSE
Speaker: Tomasz Marek Mickiewicz, Aston Business School
Speaker: Paul D Reynolds, Aston U.
Speaker: Justin W. Webb, U. of North Carolina, Charlotte

Entrepreneurs in many locales around the world face severely adverse living and working conditions (conflict, poverty, unsafe living environments, natural disasters, social exclusion, etc.), making new business creation difficult. Entrepreneurship and new business activities are central for economic development and lifting nations out of poverty, but we still know relatively little about entrepreneurial activity in adverse conditions, particularly about its antecedents, consequences and how it unfolds after inception. The goal of this PDW is to encourage researchers to work on this topic despite the challenges it presents, and to foster relationships between researchers active - or wanting to become active-in this area. The PDW will help develop a better understanding of entrepreneurship under adversity, so as to build relevant theories, provide effective advice on education and training for entrepreneurs, and help program designers and policy makers think through societal, economic, cultural, and institutional contexts when engaging in activities to stimulate entrepreneurship. To do this, we have put together a panel of diverse researchers within the Entrepreneurship discipline who are conducting research on entrepreneurship under adverse conditions. These scholars present a variety of disciplinary perspectives and different methodological approaches. At the conclusion of the workshop, participants should take away new ideas for entrepreneurship and adversity research questions, exposure to theories and methods employed and developed by participants in the workshop, and a new- found energy for conducting research on business creation and sustainability under conditions of adversity. Ultimately, this will drive understanding of how entrepreneurship may lead to escapes from development traps.