Desirable Futures and Prospective Theorizing

With the looming planetary emergency, the future will be anything but an extension of the past. Yet theorizing the future poses a peculiar problem. By definition, it is not present yet. The conundrum of the future is that it requires conceptualizing and theorizing what is not (yet) observable and does not (yet) exist. How to then theorize (for) desirable futures?

Accessibility

An access guide to Chandler House, Lecture Theatre 118 can be found on AccessAble.

About the speaker

Ali Aslan Gümüşay is Professor of Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Sustainability at LMU Munich and head of research group Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Society at the Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society Berlin. His research focuses on (1) values, meaning and hybridity in entrepreneurship, (2) grand challenges, sustainability and new forms of organizing, (3) digitalization, management and innovation as well as (4) impact, scholarship and futures. It has been published in outlets such as Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Theory, and Research Policy.

Prior, Prof. Gümüşay was a Visiting Research Fellow at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, a senior researcher at the University of Hamburg, a research fellow at Vienna University of Economics & Business, the principal investigator of the DFG network “Grand Challenges & New Forms of Organizing”, and a DAAD Prime Fellow. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford, where he also worked as a Lecturer in Management at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Before his DPhil from Saïd Business School, he was a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group.