With some 10,000 attendees, the Meeting of the Academy of Management is the biggest annual conference there is for business school academics. At this year’s event in Boston, Aug. 9-13, one of many ACE activities was a Professional Development Workshop organised by Per Davidsson and Frederik von Briel. The workshop revolved around the notion of External Enablers, which Per and Frederik have introduced and elaborated on in recent publications. External Enablers are external changes that may open up room for new ventures, such as new technologies, regulatory change, demographic and socio-cultural trends, and even natural and man-made disasters. In a well-filled room, the audience got to hear about a fascinating array of ongoing research building on the External Enabler concept. The presentations were by Daniel Bennett (Baylor U., USA): “Infrastructural and Regulatory Enablers and Disablers”; Dominic Chalmers (U. of Glasgow, Scotland): “Blockchain Technology as an External Enabler of New Ventures in the Music Industry”; Sophie Bacq (Indiana U., on behalf of Christina Hertel, EPFL, Switzerland): “External Enablement of Community Entrepreneurship”; Richard A. Hunt (Virginia Tech, USA): “Demand-Side Enablement of New Business”, and Tatiana Iakovleva (U. of Stavanger, Norway): “Digitalization as Enabler of Firm Innovation Capacity”. The presentations were followed by a Q&A session and a design workshop aimed at developing ideas for new, creative studies of how External Enablers facilitate entrepreneurial action and success. #qutace