What Nobody Tells You About Building an Academic Career in Entrepreneurship

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-25

What does it actually mean to build a successful academic career in entrepreneurship today? That's the question a group of roughly 20 people sat with at Trinity Business School in Dublin on May 14, 2026. PhD researchers, early-career academics, seasoned scholars, speakers, and organizers all gathered for the ECSB Professional Development Workshop (PDW). The goal wasn't to hand out a formula. It was to create space to talk honestly about academic life and imagine what entrepreneurship scholarship could look like going forward. ### Challenging the Traditional Career Narrative We're told academic careers follow a neat path. Publish. Secure funding. Get promoted. Build an international reputation. Sounds clean, right? But for most scholars, the reality looks nothing like that. The workshop asked participants to push back on those conventional scripts and get personal about what success means to them. Through interactive sessions and creative activities, people acknowledged something rarely said out loud: academic careers don't move in straight lines. They're full of achievement, uncertainty, transition, and sometimes feeling completely lost or disconnected from why you started. All of this unfolded against a higher education landscape shaped by performance metrics, publication rankings, research impact measures, and institutional expectations. Those things matter, sure. But participants reflected on how they can also shrink the way scholarly success gets defined. As one attendee put it during a breakout session, "I've been chasing someone else's version of success for years without realizing it." There was a strong thread throughout the day about building authentic scholarly identities, holding onto personal values, and accepting that meaningful academic careers can take many different shapes. ### A Day of Reflection, Creativity, and Real Conversation The program mixed keynote talks with hands-on workshops, creative exercises, and open discussion. - **Educaring from the Heart** – Dr. Deirdre McGillicuddy (University College Dublin) opened the day with a session on wellbeing, self-care, and rediscovering your purpose in education. It set a thoughtful, supportive tone. - **Through the Looking Glass** – After coffee and informal networking, participants examined their own academic journeys and aspirations. - **Getting to Where We Need To – A Gender Perspective** – Dr. Briga Hynes (University of Limerick) led a conversation about gender, equity, and inclusion in academia, covering structural barriers and ways to build more inclusive environments. - **Picking up the Pieces** – A reflective activity connecting the morning's discussions to personal experience, identifying challenges and recognizing resilience. - **Playing the GAME: Understanding What Others Want… Shhhhhh** – Professor Gary Kerr (Atlantic Technological University) ran an interactive session on the unspoken expectations of institutions, reviewers, colleagues, and stakeholders, and how to navigate those systems without losing yourself. - **A Creative Pause – Vocalising What We Are Anticipating: Hanging Thoughts** – The afternoon closed with participants sharing hopes, concerns, and ambitions for their careers. ### Why This Matters Beyond Academia Here's the thing. The pressures these scholars face aren't so different from what entrepreneurs deal with every day. Metrics. Expectations. The nagging feeling that you're doing it wrong because you're not following the standard playbook. The workshop didn't pretend to have all the answers. What it offered was something more useful: permission to question the script, to define success on your own terms, and to recognize that feeling lost sometimes is part of the process, not a sign you're failing. For anyone building a career in entrepreneurship scholarship, that might be the most valuable takeaway of all.