The world is facing a ‘perfect storm’ - a combination of largely man-made crises that puts the governance of the global economic, political, social and health system as developed since the 1990s under increasing pressure. The perfect storm confronts engaged IB scholars in their teaching and research activities with fundamental organizational and intellectual choices on what phenomena to focus on and how to link their coverage of multinational strategies to relevant societal outcomes. There is a growing pressure on universities to engage in ‘big societal questions’. By focussing exclusively on a neutral position towards grand challenges, management and IB scholars are increasingly reproached by business leaders and policy makers to lose track of societal relevance which lowers their ability to create global societal impact (Doh et al., 2023). This panel considers the extent to which these challenge require a new type of IB scholarship. We will in particular explore what ‘engaged IB scholarship’ entails and what type of enabling conditions have to be created in order to gain relevance.