Dear participants of NBM@Berlin 2019,
In July, we gathered in sunny Berlin to share and discuss cutting-edge research on ‘New Business Models for Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Transformation’. It is about time for a short recap.First of all, thanks a lot for the numerous and very positive feedback we received after the conference. Below, as an example, you find the feedback from two conference guests, for which we are very thankful! The conference is documented in various online channels: Here, you can take a look at our . We published a , featuring the keynotes by Stefan Schaltegger and Lorenzo Massa, an interview with Nancy Bocken and the full ABC panel. Pictures from the welcome reception can be found . You can download our 930-page conference proceedings from ResearchGate. Feel free to share these with friends and colleagues and upload your conference papers to ResearchGate or other repositories.Finally, we would like to share two key insights from the conference with you: First, we, as researchers in the wider field of sustainable business, must get louder and bolder! There are promising approaches such as female and collective leadership, upgrading and upscaling of green and social business models, real-world experiments and many more. It is our job to make sustainability pioneers and pioneering sustainability research more visible. We must learn to communicate our insights more widely and share it with non-academic audiences as well. Second, more research is needed that crosses disciplines and experiments with new methods. If research on sustainable business is to become more relevant in the eyes of business practitioners, policy makers, consumers and civil society, we must find ways to extend the boundaries of what we know and typically do, for example by teaming up with psychologists, sociologists or designers. A special issue in the Journal of Business Models will be dedicated to such approaches.What comes next? The 5th International Conference on New Business Models will be organized around themes on societal transitions, organizational transformations and the sustainability impacts of business models. The conference will take place 1-2 July 2020 in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.Thank you all once again for making NBM@Berlin 2019 such a great success! We look forward to meeting you again next year.Best wishes,Florian Lüdeke-Freund and Tobias Froese
What our guests told us:
“It’s Thursday at noon and I’m still buzzing from all the conference activity over the last three days. I want to thank all of you for your significant efforts to make the conference such a success. I enjoyed my time here in Berlin at ESCP Europe immensely and have made many new relationships with new colleagues from all over the continent. So, thank you again. You did a wonderful job and I commend you on your work.” (Stephen Davies, Managing Director, Transformation by Design)
“Thank you very much for an amazing event. I have enjoyed the thoughtfully selected places for social events and very high academic quality of key notes and other presentations. Even being new, I could feel the spirit of the community. Congratulations! It was not flattery! All true. I have been to many international conferences, thus my praise is honest. You, the team and the venues did justice to the 200 years of ESCP Europe.)” (Ieva Zebryte, Universidad de La Frontera & ISM University of Management and Economics)