Stories from the Field: Getting Started with the Flourishing Business Canvas in Entrepreneurship Education and Research

Flourishing Business Community
Speakers Series: Stories from the Field #26

Getting Started with the Flourishing Business Canvas in Entrepreneurship Education and Research with Dr. Larry Clay

Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Time: 16h00 UTC – 08h00 PST, 11h00 EST, 15h00 BST, 16h00 CET, 01h00 + 1day JST.  To convert UTC to your time zone, click here

Duration: 1 hour

Registration: Required via Eventbrite at bit.ly/SFF26-Register

For our twenty sixth monthly flourishing business community speaker series,: stories from the field, the community is delighted to welcome Dr. Larry Clay a professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy from the College of Business, Innovation, Leadership, and Technology (BILT) at Marymount University, based just outside Washington D.C. in the United States of America.  Dr. Clay is also on the board of directors of the Flourishing Enterprise Co-lab.

The Flourishing Enterprise Co-lab is grateful for the support of Social Innovation at Georgian College, Ontario, Canada, to put on our speaker series. 

Dr. Clay’s work integrates teaching, research, and executive advising to prepare leaders to build flourishing enterprises and communities.  As an educator, he is leading the development of a campus-wide entrepreneurship program that positions entrepreneurship as a core capability for all students.  In the Doctor of Business Administration in Business Intelligence, he advises and chairs executive doctoral candidates, guiding them in qualitative and quantitative research design and helping them translate advanced analytics and design science into actionable strategies for organizations.  As a researcher he is a National Science Foundation-funded innovation researcher focused on designing sustainable and flourishing innovation ecosystems that connect entrepreneurship, quantum-informed management, and human-centered design.

Marymount University’s College of Business, Innovation, Leadership, and Technology (BILT) brings together the School of Business, the School of Technology and Innovation, and the School of Design + Art (SoDA) to integrate business, technology, and creative disciplines in a single, future-focused learning community.  This provides the inter- and trans- disciplinary environment necessary to explore all facets of flourishing – from the personal, to the organizational and at larger scales of community, city, bioregion, county and planet.

Dr. Clay uses the Flourishing Business Canvas (FBC) in his undergraduate “Introduction to Entrepreneurship” course as a core learning instrument that helps students from all majors see how their disciplinary knowledge, cultural backgrounds, and personal interests are embedded in and essential to the entrepreneurial and creative process.  By converging diverse ideas within the FBC’s holistic framework, he activates two key drivers of entrepreneurship, connections and conversations, guiding students to co-create venture concepts that integrate social, environmental, and economic flourishing as well as individual human flourishing.   

Beyond the undergraduate classroom, Dr. Clay employs the FBC in the following ways:

• Within Humanity’s Team Conscious Business Change Agent certificate programme, where he is Program Dean and Business Coach, training executives, entrepreneurs, and consultants in business design, value creation, and venturing for positive impact.  
• At Marymount University’s Global Entrepreneurship Week, facilitating sessions for students, community members, faculty, and staff, 
• To explore different pedagogical approaches at multiple academic and teaching conferences to equip other educators and trainers, e.g. Conscious Business Change Certificate, MOBTS Oceania.  

In these trainer-focused contexts, he emphasizes intelligent facilitation design, which aligns the FBC workshop approach with space and modality (paper canvases, large-format posters, digital platforms, team breakouts, bricolage activities), so that the structure of the experience itself models flourishing, contribution, and creative collaboration that also enhances the individual flourishing mindset.

Dr. Clay’s presentation will respond to the following questions:

• How did Dr. Clay build his own knowledge of the FBC and gain confidence to apply it in his teaching and research?
• Reaction of his colleagues towards the idea of Flourishing Business Models
• Challenges for the students and the entrepreneurs applying the Canvas
• Pedagogical and andragogical insights so far – what is exciting and challenging as a teacher and researcher
• What does Dr. Clay hope to gain from participating in the Flourishing Business Community?
• What can Dr. Clay offer to the community?

At the end of his talk Dr. Clay will take questions from members of the community. After the event, a video of the talk plus slides will be shared in the “Speaker Series” space of the Flourishing Business Community. Please join other flourishing business leaders and become a full member to access.