ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

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Entrepreneuring and Knowing From the Inside: A dialogue between entrepreneurship processes and practices

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​The traditional aims of Entrepreneurship as Practice Conferences are to advance our understanding of entrepreneurship-as-practice, foster network ties, facilitate collaborative writing relationships, and build a strong community of practice scholars.

 

Building on this tradition, our theme for the eleventh edition of this conference will be “Entrepreneuring and Knowing From the Inside: A dialogue between entrepreneurship processes and practices”. Entrepreneurs develop new ventures that fulfil customer needs and spur economic growth by recognizing, creating, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities. Yet, despite progress, our scholarly understanding of how entrepreneurs achieve these objectives remains incomplete. A key challenge within current entrepreneurship research is that “most entrepreneurship scholarship consists of conversations between academics about entrepreneurs but excludes the perspectives of the entrepreneurs being discussed” (Dimov, et al., 2021, p. 1177). This leads to the establishment of two distinct scholarly points of view, which we call, knowing from the outside and knowing from the inside.

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Knowing from the outside entails “an external observer committed to objective, stable points of reference” (Dimov, et al., 2021, p. 1177) undertaking ‘rational inquiry’ to generate ‘knowledge’ uncontaminated by contact with the lived experience of entrepreneuring. Knowing from the inside, by contrast, “comes from thinking with, from and through beings and things, not just about them” (Ingold, 2022, p. xi) and involves “an engaged dialogist committed to the shared interests of entrepreneurs coping with the vicissitudes of the world” (Dimov, et al., 2021, p. 1177). Entrepreneurship process research that studies entrepreneurship as “a journey that explicitly transpires over time” as opposed to “an act” (McMullen & Dimov, 2013, p. 1482) and EAP scholarship, that “conceives of the process of entrepreneuring as the enactment and entanglement of multiple practices” (Thompson, et al., 2020), are therefore uniquely well placed to develop knowing from the inside that matters to practicing entrepreneurs.  Both are rooted in process-relational ontology and focus on the relational aspects of entrepreneurial activities (Gherardi, 2019; Steyaert, 2007). Scholars have even suggested that process research and practice theory may enrich each other (Burgelman, et al., 2018). However, to date, we lack deeper theorizing and empirical evidence to further advance this valuable discourse for the benefit of entrepreneurship studies. Few scholars have prioritized a practitioner perspective and thus have not considered the challenges that knowing from the inside (henceforth KFI) entails (Thompson & Byrne, 2022).

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KFI requires theoretical explanations for how and why some venture ideas evolve into venture opportunities while others don’t (Vogel, 2017). This makes drawing boundaries between the entrepreneurship process and EAP subfields unduly limiting for KFI.  KFI, therefore, requires closer theoretical integration or dialogues between process perspectives that regard entrepreneurship as organizational creation (Hjorth, et al., 2015; Steyaert, 2007) and practice perspectives that focus on the “performance of various, real practices through which practitioners develop new meaning, transform practical knowledge, or develop new associations between actual practices” (Champenois, et al., 2020, p. 284) within entrepreneurship studies. The overall aim of this conference is to explore and re-examine the relation between practices of inquiry in entrepreneurship studies and the forms of knowledge to which they give rise. In line with the theme for this year’s conference - “Entrepreneuring and Knowing From the Inside: Dialogue between entrepreneurship processes and practices” - we seek both conceptually rigorous and empirically relevant contributions that advance entrepreneurship theory and practice. The following questions illustrate potential areas of interest, but they offer only a starting point; we welcome creativity in topic, theory and method:

• How does opportunity exploitation emerge and what practices underpin the stages, forms, or activities that this emergence takes?

• What practices are involved in decisions to initiate, proceed, or terminate an entrepreneurial project and how are such decisions made?

• What are the practices that underpin entrepreneurial pivots and how do such pivots reframe entrepreneurial opportunities?

• What forms do business relationships between the entrepreneur and his or her investors take and how are such relationships negotiated, monitored, and enforced? 

• What practices underpin the actions and cognition that lead to entrepreneurial learning and how does this evolve during new venture creation?

 

High-quality abstracts offering novel insights and contributions in both, early and later stages of development, are, therefore, warmly invited. We also welcome all submissions that address entrepreneurship process and practice research more broadly, in addition to those targeting the conference theme of knowing from the inside.

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REFERENCES

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Prof. Jeffery McMullen (Imperial Business School) 

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Prof. Raghu Garud (Pennsylvania State University)

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Prof. Boukje Cnossen (Leuphana University)

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Albert Read (Executive Chairman of The Standard; Former MD of Conde Nast)​​

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CONFERENCE PROGRAMME (PRELIMINARY)​

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LOCATION

The 11th edition of this Conference will be hosted by the Brett Centre for Entrepreneurship and will take place in person only at University of Liverpool, UK. You can learn more about the Brett Centre by clicking here. If you are not able to join in person, we have an online symposium every year in the autumn, please see events page

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HOW TO JOIN 

There are three routes for you to join the Conference:

 

Submit paper to Paper Development Workshop. We welcome submissions to our popular PDW sessions. The abstract is due on 17th January, 2026. The abstract is a maximum of 500 words. Upon acceptance, please notify us if you plan to join. Early bird registration and final registration deadline are below. The deadline for the full paper is March 19th, 2026. Full papers are 10,000 words maximum including references. 

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Submit an abstract to the Emerging Paper Session. The Emerging Paper Session (EPS) allows scholars to give and receive feedback on developing ideas or ongoing work that still needs to be developed into a full paper. Early bird registration and final registration deadline are below. The submission deadline for the Emerging Paper Session is March 7th, 2026. The abstract is a maximum of 500 words. Upon acceptance, we will communicate the date and time for your presentation.

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No paper, no problem. We welcome scholars of all levels who are interested in EAP. The conference includes many opportunities to learn from keynote speakers, participate in roundtable discussions, and network with EAP scholars. You can also participate as an audience member in the presentations and give feedback on PDW papers. We will have special breakfast mentoring sessions for PhD students and early-career scholars. See registration deadlines below.

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KEY DATES

January 1st, 2026                      General registration opens                 

January 17th, 2026                    Abstract submission deadline for PDW                 

January 24th, 2026                   Notification of acceptance to PDW

February 6th, 2026                   Early-bird registration deadline

March 7th, 2026                        Abstract submission to Emerging Paper deadline

March 8th, 2026                        Notification of acceptance to presentation session

March 13th, 2026                      Registration deadline (All participants)

March 19th, 2026                      Full paper submission deadline (those accepted to PDW) 

April 7 – 10th, 2026                   Conference Dates

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CONFERENCE COSTS AND REGISTRATION

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February 6th, 2026 Early-bird registration deadline

Early Bird Rates (PhD): £200

Early Bird Rates Academics: £350

 

March 13th, 2026    Registration deadline (All participants)

Regular Rates (PhD): £250

Regular Rates Academics: £400

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Travel and accommodation are not included. For hotel discounts, see below.

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ACCOMMODATION

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Special hotel rates have been negotiated.

 

Hope Street Hotel (0.4 miles from venue) £102 B&B per person per night, special rate available until 27th January 2026. For reservations, call the hotel on 0151-709-3000 or email reservations@hopestreethotel.co.uk quoting GA005947.

 

Novotel, Paddington Village (0.3 miles from venue) £109 B&B per night per person, special rate available until 24th February 2026. For reservations, call the hotel on 0151 245 6694 / 6697 quoting discount code 917193. If trying to book outside of this time, please email HB737-RE@accor.com and one of the team will be in touch as soon as possible.

 

Hotel rooms are subject to tourist tax.

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​​TRANSPORTATION

Getting to Liverpool

 

Liverpool City Region boasts exceptional transport connectivity and a diverse range of travel options, rivalling cities across the globe. With various and convenient access routes, reaching Liverpool is a seamless journey, regardless of whether you're travelling by road, rail, air, or sea, get away to it all with ease.  

 

Served by two international airports - Liverpool and Manchester you can catch a flight to the city from wherever your starting point. For UK travellers, rail is a great way to travel. Hop on board at Liverpool Lime Street station, which connects the city to the wider UK rail system with services from multiple operators. The Merseyrail network efficiently links Chester, Wirral, Southport, and Liverpool Airport through the Wirral and Northern Line networks. The City Line provides easy navigation within Liverpool City Centre.

 

If you’re driving, The UK Motorway network serves the Liverpool City Region via the M6, M62, M58 and M56 and so is effortlessly accessed by car and various coach networks.

 

For more details click on the link below:

 

https://www.visitliverpool.com/visitor-information/travel-information/travel-to-liverpool/

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PLEASE SEND ALL INQUIRIES TO: EAP11@liverpool.ac.uk

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BACKGROUND OF THE CONFERENCE

​The practice-theory tradition (also known as practice-based studies, the practice-theory approach or the practice-theory lens) forefronts the notion that practices and their connections are fundamental to all social phenomena (Rouse, 2006; Gherardi, 2019; Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, & Savigny, 2001). For entrepreneurship it means that people together “perform” ventures, startups and firms on an everyday basis through materially accomplished and ordered practices (Chalmers & Shaw, 2017; Hill, 2018; Johannisson, 2011; Vincent & Pagan, 2019). This is to say that descriptions and explanations of entrepreneurship—such as, recognizing, evaluating and exploiting opportunities—are incomplete without the ‘alternate’ description and explanation of how entrepreneurship is actually lived in and through practices (Gross, Carson, & Jones, 2014; Keating, Geiger, & Mcloughlin, 2013). The term ‘practice’, therefore, does not refer to an ‘empty’ conceptual category of ‘what entrepreneurs think and do’ (Sklaveniti & Steyaert, 2019), but encompasses the collective meaning-making, identity-forming and order-producing interactions (Chia & Holt, 2006; Nicolini, 2009; Thompson et al., 2022) enacted by multiple entrepreneurial practitioners and situated in specific (historical) conditions. Therefore, practice theories orient entrepreneurship scholars to take seriously the practices of entrepreneuring as they unfold and are experienced in real-time (Bell, 2025; Gherardi, 2022). Simply put, practice-theory scholars are concerned with the ‘nitty-gritty’ work of entrepreneuring—all the meetings, the talking, the selling, the form-filling and the number-crunching by which opportunities actually get enacted (Ge et al., 2024; Hill et al., 2025; Matthews, Chalmers, & Fraser, 2018).

For background and information on EaP literature, prior conferences, media and other pertinent materials, please go to: https://www.entrepreneurshipaspractice.com.

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​​​​The Conference aims at educating interested scholars as well as helps to develop empirical and conceptual papers regarding the ‘practice turn’ taking place in entrepreneurship studies. Building on the 

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• First (February 2016 at VU Amsterdam), 

• Second (February 2017 at University College Dublin Quinn School of Business), 

• Third (April 2018 at Linnaeus University), 

• Fourth (April 2019 at Nantes Business School), 

• Fifth and sixth (virtual events), 

• Seventh (April 2022 at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), 

• Eighth (Leuphana University), 

• Ninth (University of Leeds) and 

• Tenth (Jönköping International Business School) 

Entrepreneurship-as-Practice (EaP) conferences, this conference will be hosted by the Brett Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Liverpool. 

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​​For more up to date information straight to your inbox, sign up to our newsletter here.

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REFERENCES​

Bell, E., 2025. Fermenting alternatives through the more-than-human relations of craft entrepreneuring. Human Relations, 78(6), pp. 820-841.

Burgelman, R. A. et al., 2018. Strategy processes and practices: Dialogues and intersections. Strategic Management Journal, Volume 39, p. 531–558.

Champenois, C., Lefebvre, V. & Ronteau, S., 2020. Entrepreneurship as practice: systematic literature. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 32(3-4), p. 281–312.

Dimov, D., Schaefer, R. & Pistrui, J., 2021. Look Who Is Talking … and Who Is Listening: Finding an Integrative “We” Voice in Entrepreneurial Scholarship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 45(5), p. 1176–1196.

Ge, B., E. Hamilton, and K. Haag. 2023. An Entrepreneurship-As-Practice Perspective of Next-Generation Becoming Family Businesses Successors: The Role of Discursive Artefacts. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development 36, 489–515. 

Gherardi, S. 2019. How to Conduct a Practice-Based Study: Problems and Methods Second Edition. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Gherardi, S. 2022. Under What Conditions is a Domain-Specific Practice Theory of Entrepreneurship Possible? In: Research Handbook on Entrepreneurship as Practice, edited by N. Thompson, O. Byrne, A. Jenkins, and B. Teague, pp. 29–39. London, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Hill, I. 2018. How Did You Get Up and Running? Taking a Bourdieuan Perspective Towards a Framework for Negotiating Strategic Fit. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development 30 (5–6), 662–696. 

Hill, I., Wishart, M. and Merrell, I. 2025. Fanning the flame - a process-relational view on creative hub practices for rural development. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, pp. 1-28. 

Hjorth, D., Holt, R. & Steyaert, C., 2015. Entrepreneurship and process studies. International Small Business Journal, 33(6), p. 599–611.

Ingold, T., 2022. Knowing from the inside. In: T. Ingold , ed. Knowing from the inside: Cross-Disciplinary Experiments with Matters of Pedagogy. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. xi-xii.

McMullen, J. S. & Dimov, D., 2013. Time and the Entrepreneurial Journey: The Problems and Promise of Studying Entrepreneurship as a Process. Journal of Management Studies, 50(8), pp. 1481-1512.

Steyaert, C., 2007. 'Entrepreneuring' as a conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 19(November), pp. 453-477.

Thompson, N. A. & Byrne, O., 2022. Imagining Futures: Theorizing the Practical Knowledge of Future-making. Organization Studies, 43(2), p. 247–268.

Thompson NA, Byrne O, Jenkins A, et al. (2022) Introduction to the research handbook on entrepreneurship as practice. In: Thompson NA, Byrne O, Jenkins A, et al. (eds) Research Handbook on Entrepreneurship as Practice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1–19.

Thompson, N. A., Verduijn, K. & Gartner, W. B., 2020. Entrepreneurship-as-practice: grounding contemporary theories of practice into entrepreneurship studies. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 32(3-4), pp. 247-256.

Vogel, P., 2017. From Venture Idea to Venture Opportunity. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 41(6), p. 943–971.