Are you an educator?

Inclusive case studies matter because cases do more than help students practice analysis; they also shape how students understand entrepreneurship, who they recognize as legitimate entrepreneurs, and what kinds of ventures they believe are worth building. Case-based learning is a powerful pedagogical tool because it asks students to work through ambiguity, apply theory to real decisions, and engage with the complexity of practice (Garvin, 2007; Herreid & Schiller, 2013). In entrepreneurship education, this matters even more because students are not only learning skills; they are also exploring possible entrepreneurial identities and learning what entrepreneurship can look like (Béchard & Grégoire, 2005; Neck & Greene, 2011; Nabi et al., 2017). Yet research also shows that business and entrepreneurship cases are not neutral. They can reproduce narrow assumptions about leadership, innovation, growth, gender, race, and legitimacy, especially when the stories we teach repeatedly centre the same kinds of founders and the same kinds of success (Bridgman et al., 2016; Sharen & McGowan, 2019; Batchelder et al., 2025; Richard, Deal, & Mills, 2021).

This matters deeply in food, agriculture, and ocean economies, where entrepreneurship is tied to food security, climate resilience, ecological sustainability, community well-being, and regional economic futures (FAO, 2023; Krause et al., 2022). These sectors are full of innovation, but the stories and leadership of women, Indigenous peoples, racialized founders, small-scale operators, and community-based ventures remain underrepresented in many entrepreneurship classrooms. Research on women’s entrepreneurship in agrifood systems, ocean economies, and entrepreneurship policy shows that participation is shaped not only by individual opportunity, but also by the systems, narratives, policies, and ecosystems that define whose work is visible, legitimate, and supported (Dimick et al., 2025; Doolittle Llanos et al., 2025; Richard, 2025; Richard, Muldoon, & Lee, 2025).

Harvesting Impact responds to that gap by creating open, accessible, and equity-informed teaching materials that help students ask better questions about opportunity, power, sustainability, inclusion, and impact. These cases and podcasts are designed to widen the stories we teach and give students more ways to see entrepreneurship as a practice connected to communities, ecosystems, food systems, ocean economies, and social change.