The Space Economy PDW at AOM 2025 marked the formal launch of a dedicated management research conversation around the Space Economy.
The PDW brought together scholars, industry leaders, space agencies, entrepreneurs, facilitators, contributors, volunteers, and participants to explore how the Space Economy can become a major context for management research.
At the time, the PDW became the largest Professional Development Workshop in the history of the Academy of Management, reflecting the strong interest across the Academy in understanding space not only as a scientific, engineering, or policy frontier, but also as a frontier for management research.
Why this PDW mattered
The 2025 PDW was built around a central premise: the Space Economy offers a powerful setting for studying some of the most important questions in management.
As commercial activity in space expands, organizations face challenges related to business models, ecosystem emergence, public-private collaboration, contracting, innovation, entrepreneurship, platform formation, internationalization, governance, and organizing under extreme uncertainty.
The PDW created a space for scholars and practitioners to ask: how can management research help us understand the emergence of the Space Economy? And how can the Space Economy help us develop new theories of management?
Keynotes
Roundtable themes and facilitators
The 2025 PDW was championed by the AOM TIM Division. We are especially grateful to Valentina Tartari, Sue Cohen, Elena Novelli, Tobias Kretschmer, and Llewellyn D. W. Thomas for their support in helping bring this initiative to the Academy of Management community.
What began as a large and ambitious PDW at AOM 2025 continued into the 2026 PDW, which expanded the community further with broader divisional sponsorship, stronger industry engagement, and a larger network of contributors. Together, the 2025 and 2026 PDWs helped establish the foundation for the planned Space Economy Conference in Spring 2027.
Photographs from the PDW
Space Economy PDW at AOM 2025 — 85th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management.
