Science, Fiction, and Entrepreneurship: Teaching Bold Futures Thinking for Entrepreneurial Action Today

This paper introduces a learning innovation that merges science fiction with entrepreneurship education to encourage bold, futures-oriented thinking and entrepreneurial action today. Developed for master’s level students at a public research-oriented university, this learning innovation promotes the exploration of distant futures, leveraging established tools from futures studies within an entrepreneurial context. Through a structured five-step process, students shift their focus from cognitively proximate futures to those that radically diverge from the present, enabling them to conceive of innovative ventures. The learning innovation thus fosters performative futures thinking, engaging in speculative science fiction authoring, and utilizing backcasting to translate visionary futures into immediate entrepreneurial actions. Over three yearly iterations, the learning innovation has demonstrated its effectiveness in broadening students’ imaginative capabilities and improving their capacity to act upon fictional expectations. This paper reflects on the outcomes, student feedback, and potential applications of the learning innovation in various educational and corporate settings.