Higher economic education and mindset shift toward sustainable business

I have been lucky to have obtained a HAN PhD scholarship, where I work as a researcher in the research group ‘Promising entrepreneurship’(Kansrijk Ondernemen) of Thomas Lans. I also feel very fortunate to be working with Renate Wesselink and Thomas Lans (HAN, University of Applied Sciences) on a project concerning higher economic education and mindset shift toward sustainable business. The aim of economic education embracing new economic thinking (Circular Economy, regenerative economy, etc.) is to educate change agents, opening up the mindset of students to value creation, simultaneously empowering the students to stimulate mindset shift themselves within the organizational context. How this can be done, is not evident.

My interest in design principles of mindset shift started about 6 years ago when I designed the transformational leadership & professional skills program for the first master's in Circular Economy in the Netherlands, and more recently, the professional identity program for the new master’s in Integrated Advisor SME. As a teacher, I was fortunate to witness processes of personal transformation and subsequent organizational transitions. It touched my heart and it was the reason for me to take the next step: researching these processes in a more fundamental way, and sharing insights on mindset shift. My ultimate goal is to unravel working mechanisms that foster the much-needed paradigm shift many economists talk about, in order to make mindset shift transferable to other educational contexts.