What Success Really Looks Like in Entrepreneurship Academia

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-25

What does it actually mean to build a successful academic career in entrepreneurship today? It's a question that sounds simple until you try to answer it. That's exactly what around 20 people wrestled with at the ECSB Professional Development Workshop (PDW), held at Trinity Business School in Dublin on May 14, 2026. PhD researchers, early-career academics, seasoned scholars, speakers, and organizers all gathered in one room — not to present polished papers, but to talk honestly about the messy reality of academic life. ### The Straight Line That Isn't We're told academic careers follow a neat path: publish, get funding, earn promotions, build an international reputation. Sounds clean, right? But anyone who's actually lived it knows the truth is far messier. The workshop gave people space to push back on those conventional narratives. Through interactive sessions and creative exercises, participants admitted that academic careers rarely move in a straight line. They're full of highs, doubts, transitions, and those moments where you wonder if you've lost touch with why you started. All of this happened against a backdrop of performance metrics, publication rankings, and institutional expectations. Those things matter — no one's pretending they don't. But participants reflected on how they can also shrink what "success" is allowed to mean. ### A Day Built for Reflection The program mixed keynote talks with hands-on workshops, creative exercises, and open conversation. Here's how the day unfolded: - **"Educaring from the Heart"** — Dr. Deirdre McGillicuddy from University College Dublin opened with a session on wellbeing, self-care, and rediscovering your purpose in education. It set a thoughtful, supportive tone from the start. - **"Through the Looking Glass"** — After coffee and informal networking, participants examined their own academic journeys and ambitions. - **"Getting to Where We Need To – A Gender Perspective"** — Dr. Briga Hynes from the University of Limerick sparked important conversations about gender, equity, and inclusion in academia, covering both structural barriers and opportunities for change. - **"Picking up the Pieces"** — An activity designed to connect the morning's discussions with personal experience, helping people name challenges, recognize resilience, and imagine what's next. - **"Playing the GAME"** — Professor Gary Kerr from Atlantic Technological University led 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"** — The day closed with participants sharing hopes, worries, and ambitions for their careers. ### What Stuck With People One theme kept coming up: the importance of building an authentic scholarly identity. That means holding onto your values even when the system pushes you toward a narrow definition of success. > "Academic careers rarely progress in a straight line. They're characterized by moments of achievement, uncertainty, transition, and at times, feeling lost." Meaningful academic careers can take many different shapes. The workshop didn't pretend to have all the answers. What it offered instead was something arguably more valuable — a space where people could be honest about the hard parts and still feel hopeful about what's ahead. For anyone building a career in entrepreneurship scholarship, that might be the most useful takeaway of all.