Sustainable Inclusion: Emerging Technologies, Innovative Learning Environments, and Entrepreneurial Learning in the Context of Individual and Societal Variability

The world is transforming at an unprecedented pace. Technological advancements, increasing global connections, and a clearer understanding of diverse learner needs are rapidly reshaping both education and the workplace. This dynamic environment necessitates a fundamental re-evaluation of teaching and learning. Traditional, uniform models, often designed for a more homogenous learner population and stable professional landscape, are demonstrably less effective in preparing individuals for the intricate challenges of today and tomorrow. Instead, a flexible and responsive educational approach is urgently needed. This new paradigm must foster creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, adaptability, and resilience, cultivating a robust entrepreneurial mindset. Crucially, it must ensure accessible and effective learning for everyone, supporting long-term inclusion and equal opportunities across all societal strata.

1. Individual and Societal Variability: A Central Challenge in Entrepreneurial Learning

Our pursuit of sustainable and inclusive development is essential amidst pervasive global challenges like climate change, rapid technological change, and persistent social inequality. Addressing these complex issues demands innovative solutions and adaptable mindsets, compelling us to re-examine approaches to learning, innovation, and empowering future change-makers through entrepreneurial learning.

Historically, education systems, encompassing both formal settings like universities and non-formal environments such as work–life learning and organizational training initiatives, have favored standardized approaches, primarily for administrative convenience (Zhao et al., 2023). However, these models frequently fail to account for the wide spectrum of individual and societal variability, encompassing diverse cognitive styles, socio-emotional needs, cultural backgrounds, learning speeds, and broader demographic and socio-economic shifts. This oversight has unfortunately marginalized many learners. While entrepreneurial thinking—identifying opportunities, fostering creativity, and maintaining resilience (Duchek, 2018)—is a vital life skill for all, its cultivation is not limited to formal educational setups like schools or universities; rather, entrepreneurial learning spans diverse environments, including non-formal settings such as the workplace and other organizational learning initiatives (Wang & Chugh, 2014). Therefore, instilling this mindset in a manner that respects these individual and societal differences and creates multiple, valid pathways to success remains a critical task. This challenge is amplified by a fragmented understanding of precisely how emerging technologies, innovative learning environments, and entrepreneurial development truly converge to foster genuinely sustainable and inclusive outcomes, especially given inherent human variability and its complex implications for educational design and policy.

This fundamental context of individual and societal variability highlights several critical areas where deeper understanding and innovative approaches are urgently needed:

• Tailoring Entrepreneurial Learning to Diverse Individual Needs: A significant challenge persists in designing entrepreneurial learning programs that genuinely adapt to varied cognitive styles, socio-emotional needs, and learning paces (He & Quay, 2025). This requires insight into how foundational skills, self-assessment mechanisms, and varying individual competencies dynamically influence entrepreneurial readiness and intention, moving beyond a uniform pedagogical model.
• Equitable Integration of Emerging Technologies: Despite their immense transformative potential (AI, VR, AR, blockchain) to personalize learning and democratize access, understanding how these technologies can be strategically utilized to accommodate for individual variability without inadvertently exacerbating existing digital divides or overlooking crucial ethical considerations and digital rights remains a complex undertaking (Iqbal et al., 2025a, 2025b).
• Fostering Entrepreneurial Thinking within Broad Societal Contexts: Entrepreneurial learning must evolve to serve all populations, which demands the development of educational policies and strategies that actively address historical marginalization and ensure equitable access for diverse communities, including indigenous groups. The influence of demographic shifts and persistent inequalities on entrepreneurial opportunities and learning outcomes remains a complex issue requiring nuanced, context-specific solutions (Baalbaki & El Khoury, 2025).
• Holistic Integration of Sustainability and Social Impact: While economic value creation is a traditional focus of entrepreneurship, there is an increasing demand for entrepreneurial education to incorporate sustainable practices and social entrepreneurship principles more deeply (Robles, 2024). The challenge lies in equipping learners to create ventures that balance profit with positive societal and environmental impact, fostering a broader sense of responsibility from the outset of their entrepreneurial journey.
• Cultivating Supportive Ecosystems and Adaptive Leadership: Effective entrepreneurial learning depends not only on individual initiatives but also on the strength of supportive ecosystems (academia, incubators, science parks) and the foresight of their leadership (Kyriakopoulos, 2024). A key challenge is understanding how these external environments and their leadership structures can be intentionally designed and managed to acknowledge, nurture, and facilitate the diverse entrepreneurial pathways of all learners, including addressing the impact of organizational climate and leadership styles on innovation and well-being.
• Breaking Disciplinary Silos for Comprehensive Entrepreneurial Solutions: The complexity of modern global challenges necessitates robust interdisciplinary collaboration. A significant gap exists in effectively integrating entrepreneurial concepts across diverse fields—from STEM to the humanities and social sciences—to foster creativity and adaptability, enabling learners to develop novel, holistic solutions that transcend conventional disciplinary boundaries (Audretsch et al., 2024).

2. Our Contribution: A Comprehensive Exploration

It is within this vital context, driven by the need to bridge these critical knowledge gaps, that our Special Issue, entitled “Sustainable Inclusion: Emerging Technologies, Innovative Learning Environments, and Entrepreneurial Learning in the Context of Individual and Societal Variability”, gains its profound significance. This collection of papers was meticulously conceived to deepen our understanding of the dynamic interplay among innovative learning environments, entrepreneurial learning, and the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our primary objective was to foster crucial discussions on the challenges, opportunities, and innovative pedagogical strategies essential for cultivating entrepreneurial mindsets, knowledge, and competencies across diverse learning contexts. This eBook places a strong and consistent emphasis on the nuanced dimensions of individual and societal variability, acknowledging that the pathways to entrepreneurial success and sustainable impact are not uniform but are profoundly shaped by unique personal circumstances, cultural backgrounds, and systemic factors inherent in the entrepreneurial learning journey. This comprehensive volume thus serves as a vital platform for PhD scholars, novice and senior researchers, entrepreneurship educators, educational policymakers, entrepreneurs, and practitioners. It invites them to engage in a comprehensive dialog on critical issues, persistent problems, and innovative trends in promoting entrepreneurship that is both resilient and equitable, with a clear focus on how individuals learn to become such impactful entrepreneurs. Within this complex and multifaceted context, this collection of works integrates theoretical understanding with empirical insights to provide a more comprehensive and actionable understanding of these interconnected areas.

3. Contributions of the Special Issue

This Special Issue significantly advances our understanding by addressing the aforementioned challenges related to individual and societal variability through diverse research. The published papers collectively offer a multifaceted view of entrepreneurial learning and innovative environments, providing key insights across several critical domains:

• Foundational Skills for Entrepreneurial Readiness: The contributions by Bashir et al. (2025) underscore how information literacy impacts entrepreneurial readiness, emphasizing digital competencies crucial for aspiring entrepreneurs. Ceresia (2023) presents an interactive learning environment for the online self-assessment of performance management capabilities, catering to individual learning styles and self-assessment needs. These papers explore how foundational competencies and self-perception influence entrepreneurial intentions and capabilities, offering valuable insights for designing more effective and personalized entrepreneurial education.
• Organizational Context and Leadership in Fostering Entrepreneurial Learning: A significant portion of this Special Issue delves into the organizational and leadership factors that shape innovative behavior and employee well-being within educational settings, which are foundational for cultivating entrepreneurial mindsets among students and faculty alike. Zargar et al. (2025) demonstrate how work engagement and perceived organizational support drive innovative work behavior among university teachers. Similarly, Hassanein et al. (2025a) explore the linkage between supportive leadership, perceived organizational support, and the organizational climate in terms of employee well-being in academia. Conversely, another contribution by Hassanein et al. (2025b) highlights the detrimental impact of toxic leadership on job satisfaction in the Middle Eastern education sector, underscoring societal variability in leadership effectiveness and its consequences for fostering an entrepreneurial culture. Furthermore, Rivera et al. (2025) emphasize the importance of relational capital within organizational contexts as a key component for facilitating entrepreneurial learning and collaboration.
• Leveraging Technology for Sustainable and Inclusive Entrepreneurial Learning: This Special Issue features papers directly exploring the nexus of technology, sustainability, and inclusion in entrepreneurial education. Cocu et al. (2025) offer a practical framework for integrating technology-enabled entrepreneurship education with a focus on green and sustainable practices, providing concrete digital tools for educators. Fariña-Sánchez and Gutiérrez-Santiuste (2024) provide empirical evidence on gender disparities and the observance of digital rights among young entrepreneurs, directly addressing aspects of societal variability and the need for equitable access and protection in the digital entrepreneurial space, thus informing inclusive entrepreneurial learning strategies. Additionally, Shaukat et al. (2024) reinforce the importance of information literacy, creativity, and lifelong learning in media professionals, highlighting these skills as increasingly intertwined with digital entrepreneurial endeavors and continuous adaptation.
• Promoting Interdisciplinary Approaches and Ecosystem Development: While not explicitly separate themes in the paper listings, the collected works collectively demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary thinking and the nurturing of entrepreneurial ecosystems. By showcasing research from varied fields and contexts (e.g., ethical leadership in academia influencing innovation and digital rights for young entrepreneurs), this volume implicitly advocates for integrated educational frameworks and robust support structures that recognize and cultivate the unique contributions individuals from diverse backgrounds can bring to entrepreneurial endeavors. This highlights how formal and informal learning environments contribute to an overall entrepreneurial capacity, emphasizing the importance of supportive organizational and institutional climates for fostering innovation and entrepreneurial thinking among both faculty and students.

These papers, utilizing diverse methodologies—including quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews, and system dynamics modeling—and drawing insights from various geographical contexts, such as Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Europe, provide a nuanced understanding of how entrepreneurial learning and innovative environments interact with individual and societal variability. They offer context-specific insights vital for effective entrepreneurial education and policy development.

4. Future Research Directions

While this Special Issue has significantly advanced our understanding, the dynamic nature of emerging trends and the complexities of sustainable inclusion present fertile ground for future research, particularly concerning entrepreneurial learning. We propose several key areas for scholarly inquiry:

• Deepen Inclusion and Intersectionality: Future research should explore the intersectional experiences of diverse groups (e.g., indigenous entrepreneurs, individuals with disabilities, refugees, or specific ethnic minorities) within innovative learning environments and entrepreneurial ecosystems (Krüger & David, 2020; Tamtik, 2020). More qualitative and mixed-methods studies are needed to capture these nuanced narratives.
• Longitudinal Impact Assessment: Critical longitudinal studies are needed to track the long-term impact of innovative pedagogies on entrepreneurial success, sustainable practices, and social impact across diverse learner populations (Arendt et al., 2025; Herlina & Wahira, 2024).
• Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies: As AI and other advanced technologies integrate further, research must critically examine their ethical implications for entrepreneurial learners, including algorithmic bias in support systems, data privacy, and ensuring equitable access (Jain & Menon, 2023; Sahoo et al., 2024).
• Measure “Sustainable Entrepreneurial Mindsets”: Develop robust metrics to assess the cultivation of entrepreneurial mindsets that prioritize environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors and identify effective pedagogical approaches for this (Lehmann et al., 2024; Ragazou et al., 2024).
• Policy Coherence: Further empirical research is needed to evaluate policies promoting inclusive entrepreneurship education, including comparative studies across different national or regional contexts to identify best practices.
• Role of Informal Learning: Explore the significant role of informal learning, mentorship networks, and community-based initiatives in fostering entrepreneurial learning and sustainable inclusion, particularly for those without access to traditional academic institutions (Suryono et al., 2023).
• Adaptive Leadership Models: Investigate adaptive leadership models tailored for dynamic, technology-driven entrepreneurial learning environments, focusing on cultivating resilience, psychological safety, and continuous learning sensitive to individual and societal variability among entrepreneurial learners.

This Special Issue, entitled “Sustainable Inclusion: Emerging Technologies, Innovative Learning Environments, and Entrepreneurial Learning in the Context of Individual and Societal Variability”, represents a significant contribution to the ongoing discourse on entrepreneurship education and innovation. By synthesizing insights on emerging technologies, innovative learning environments, and entrepreneurial development, and critically examining them through the lens of individual and societal variability, this collection underscores the urgent need for approaches that are not only effective but also equitable and sustainable in fostering entrepreneurial capabilities.

The papers herein provide a robust foundation for understanding the complex dynamics at play in entrepreneurial learning, offering both empirical evidence and theoretical frameworks. We hope that this compilation will inspire further rigorous research, foster interdisciplinary collaborations, and inform the development of more inclusive and impactful entrepreneurial practices.

We extend our sincere gratitude to all of the authors for their invaluable contributions, to the diligent reviewers for their insightful feedback, and to the Editorial team of Administrative Sciences for their unwavering support. It has been a privilege to serve as Guest Editors for this Special Issue, and we eagerly anticipate the continued advancements in this vital field.