King’s Business School had a real presence at this year’s conference, from keynote contributions to award-winning research and work by emerging scholars. It shows the strength of our social entrepreneurship community and the role King’s can play in shaping future research, partnerships and impact in this field.
Professor Ute Stephan, Professor of Entrepreneurship, King’s Business School
06 May 2026
King's Business School recognised at leading global social entrepreneurship conference
It underlines the School’s growing strength in research on how business can create meaningful social impact.
Academics from King’s Business School have played a prominent role at the 22nd Annual Social Entrepreneurship Conference, held at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, from 30 April to 2 May 2026. The conference brings together scholars and practitioners working on social enterprise, impact investing, corporate social innovation and entrepreneurship.
The School’s contribution spanned keynote sessions, award-winning research and presentations from established academics and early career researchers.
Dr Elisa Alt delivered the opening keynote of the academic conference, Look inside: Driving social change from within and across organizations. Drawing on more than a decade of research into social intrapreneurship and insider social change agents, her keynote explored how individuals can drive social change from within organisations.
Dr Alt also served as a thematic expert on corporate social innovation during the practitioner day, which brought academics and practitioners together to explore shared questions.
Dr Andreana “Addy” Drencheva joined the closing keynote panel, where she discussed how researchers can embed impact into the research process and better serve the communities they study. She also presented the paper From heroes to human action: Reviewing and revising the individual perspective in social entrepreneurship, co-authored with Professor Ute Stephan and Dr Alt.
Professor Stephan won the conference Best Paper Award for Social enterprise collaboration and varieties of impact across 36 global regions, co-authored with Inna Majoor-Kozlinska and Emma Folmer at the University of Groningen. The paper was selected from around 100 papers presented at the conference, with four shortlisted. Professor Stephan was also shortlisted for a second paper on social entrepreneurs’ issue experience, inclusive organising, wellbeing and performance.
The conference also showcased the Business School’s growing research community. Dr Yunus Isik presented work on whether impact investing reduces poverty, using evidence from venture capital in the United States. Doctoral researcher Juliana Travassos presented the first paper from her PhD dissertation on corporate social entrepreneurship experiences.
Jakob Neumair presented research on how politics shapes entrepreneurial communication on social crowdfunding platforms, co-authored with Professor Stephan and Dr Robyn Klingler-Vidra. The paper is based on his master’s dissertation from the MSc Strategic Entrepreneurship & Innovation programme.
The mission follows social entrepreneurs home. It reshapes their relationships and finances, their whole sense of self. That toll is largely unexamined in research. Our work takes that personal toll seriously and captures what social entrepreneurship costs individuals, so the structures built around this work can account for the people inside them.
Dr Andreana Drencheva , Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, King’s Business School
We’ve built an entire field around social entrepreneurship, but we’ve largely overlooked the entrepreneurial potential of people already embedded inside large organizations. Systemic change needs actors at every level—and social intrapreneurs are a key piece in catalysing organisational transformations.
Dr Elisa Alt, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, King’s Business School
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Professor of Entrepreneurship
Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship
Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship
Reader in Political Economy & Entrepreneurship