Join us at this year’s Academy of Management Meeting for our two-part PDW on “New Ways of Seeing: Non-Verbal and Multimodal Approaches to the Future”, where we will explore how visual, material, spatial, and multimodal resources can be used to engage with futures—whether through future-making, imagined futures, or in the broader contexts of sustainability, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Sponsored by OMT, SIM, SAP, STR, and TIM divisions, this PDW is open to all AOM 2025 attendees, although we welcome you to submit an extended abstract and indicate your preferred roundtable(s) for Part 2.

The PDW brings together scholars at the intersection of futures and multimodality to explore the following questions:

• Which non-verbal and multimodal means of communication are particularly promising for studying the future, and which theories (e.g., future-making, imagined futures, hype, etc.) do they best complement? What new research questions emerge when we integrate these approaches?   

• How can we use non-verbal and multimodal data to study phenomena such as climate change, social inequality, or emerging technologies? Which methods are best suited for this?

• How can we leverage multimodal tools to enhance scholar-practitioner collaborations or increase our impact to actively shape the future?

Part 1: Panel Presentations

We will kick off the PDW with presentations featuring expert inputs from:

• Paolo Aversa (King’s College London), Eva Boxenbaum (Copenhagen Business School), Tim Hannigan (U. of Ottawa), Renate Meyer (WU Vienna), Jennifer Whyte (U. of Sydney)

Part 2: Breakout Roundtable Session (Pre-registration encouraged)

In a subsequent roundtable session, participants will receive feedback from leading scholars and fellow participants on new research ideas or challenges encountered in current projects.

Roundtable Topics and Facilitators:

• #1: Future-making and visual artefacts
  Luigi Mosca (Imperial), Matthias Wenzel (Leuphana), Jennifer Whyte (U. of Sydney)

• #2: Multimodal approaches to imagined futures
  Markus Höllerer (UNSW Sydney), Renate Meyer (WU Vienna)

• #3: Gesture, materiality, space in creativity, pitches, and innovation
  Paolo Aversa (King’s College London), Jean Clarke (EM Lyon), Maria Laura Toraldo (U. of Milan)

• #4: Non-verbal resources, sustainability, impact, and stakeholder engagement
  Eva Boxenbaum (CBS), Jean-Pascal Gond (Bayes Business School), Birthe Soppe (U. of Innsbruck)

• #5: Big data, hype, entrepreneurship, and AI
  Tim Hannigan (U. of Ottawa), Christine Moser (VU Amsterdam)

How to pre-register?

While formal pre-registration is not required, we encourage you to send a brief summary (1-2 pages max) of your research interests related to the roundtable topic and preferred roundtable(s) to ines.kuric@wu.ac.at by July 10, 2025 for targeted feedback and a more engaging discussion. If you're not ready so submit a summary, please indicate your preferred roundtable(s) by the same date.

We look forward to seeing you in Copenhagen!

Ines Kuric (WU Vienna), Luigi Mosca (Imperial Business School), & Markus Höllerer (UNSW Sydney)