371: Innovation & Social Impact of Academia - Contributing to the SDGs (18750)

As this Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) unfolds, this workshop provides an occasion for reflecting on our collective contribution as scholars. Being the SDGs targets both ambitious and urgent, we need to consider new ways, new ideas, new inspirations. This is innovation in the broadest sense, including technologies when necessary, but moreover addressing “policy, purpose and organizations”, as the conference theme well reminds us. In sum, we aim to make meaningful connections among: • our research: what we research, its “so what”, its impact • our pedagogy: to whom we teach, what we teach, how we teach • our citizenship We look for an inspiring conversation about what we should do to contribute to society from our current roles of scholars, and in some cases concomitantly, business school leaders. This workshop is the natural continuation of a fruitful conversation began last year during the Boston conference at the PDW “Social Impact of Academia”, organized by the same group of colleagues. All of them are affiliated to schools in the Council on Business & Society (CoBS), a global alliance of eleven business schools in five continents, dedicated to increase the social impact of academia both in research and in pedagogy. This workshop intends to expand this ongoing conversation to the larger community of scholars at the AoM. Session attendees will briefly present their reflections about innovations related to their research, their pedagogy, and their different engagements in their respective business schools. Then, in roundtable discussions, session participants will discuss their experiences of impact. Organizers will strive to gently challenge, propose, and motivate participants to think out of the box. This PDW will conclude with a graphic representation to illustrate the potential paths for innovatives intitiatives in pedagogy, actionable research, and school leadership. The organizers will gladly share contact information among attendees and engage themselves in providing follow up for further discussions.