Since Saras S. Sarasvathy introduced Effectuation with her seminal and award winning publication in 2001, it has become a centerpiece of entrepreneurship research and education worldwide. In a single metaphor Effectuation is perfectly described with the famous fridge metaphor: Do you cook by the book or with what’s in your fridge? Effectuation is a specific decision logic derived from behavioral studies with successful entrepreneurs under complete uncertainty regarding means and ends.

The Ecclesiopreneurship Canvas method is directly derived from the Business Model Canvas described in the bestseller Business Model Generation by Yves Pigneur and Alexander Osterwalder, based on Osterwalder’s research about business models. Business Model Innovation – strongly connected with names like Henry Chesbrough, Oliver Gassmann or Frank Thomas Piller – is a dominant trend in management and consulting.

Connected for example to entrepreneurship experts like Eric Ries or Steven Blank there are a variety of  well proven concepts for product and service development, startup ventures and even organizational development, that have one thing in common: They maximize the contact with the customer beginning on day one. Creating innovation in the 21st century means working with dummies and prototypes, means asking customers about their opinion before going to serial production. This way you can reduce flop risks, but most of all: Theologically speaking this co-creative approach exposes the fact that church must fundamentally be thought as a co-creation (GS 44).

For decades entrepreneurship research had been focused on trait theories, reflecting on skills and characteristics of good entrepreneurs, thus focussing on the person of the entrepreneur. In the 1990s there happened an important change of perspective, putting the entrepreneurial opportunity in the center of attention. This change in entrepreneurship research was coined by a seminal article by Senkaran Venkataraman about “The distinctive Domain of Entrepreneurship Research” (1997). The opportunity approach got famous with Venkat’s award winning publication together with Scott Shane under the title “The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research” (2000). Pastoral Theology gains an enormous inspiration from a combination of opportunity theory with the theology of kairós and the so called signs of the times.

Studying innovation in practice and research there is a clear indication that innovation is a bottom-up phenomenon requiring organizations to involve the users (customers) in the design process. At the same time it is clear that there is a need for innovation management to simply raise the chances that new things can happen. Innovation management reduces cannibalization effects (“old cannibalizes new”) and thus is something different than change management.