This session won Best in Track 2: Beyond the Studio: Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Education for Creative & Digital Practitioners at the International Enterprise Educators Conference 2026, and is now being opened up as an online event for the wider EEUK community. If you were not able to join us at IEEC in person but want a taste of what the conference has to offer, this session is a must-attend.

Customer discovery is central to enterprise education, but learners are often expected to speak to real customers before they feel ready to do so. This online session explores how synthetic customer personas can be used as a rehearsal tool, helping founders, students and business owners practise customer conversations, test their assumptions and sharpen their questions before engaging with real people. The session is led by Dr Kadja Manninen, Manchester Metropolitan University, who developed the Synthetic Customer Persona App to support SMEs taking part in an AI innovation programme.

Participants describe their product and intended customer, then interview a fictional persona who responds in character, raises objections and does not simply agree with them. A structured debrief follows, drawing on Rogers’ (2003) Innovation-Decision Process to explore where the persona sits in relation to adoption, what may be holding them there, and what the learner should investigate with real customers next.

Through a live demonstration and discussion, delegates will explore the central design principle behind the tool: preparation, not validation. The persona is explicitly fictional and is never presented as evidence. Its value lies in giving learners a low-risk space to rehearse, encounter objections they may not have considered, and enter real customer conversations with stronger questions and greater confidence.

The session will also consider how the tool can be integrated into workshops and enterprise teaching, how theory is embedded within its outputs, and the practical issues of data handling, transparency and responsible AI use.

Whether you are already using AI in your teaching or are looking for practical ways to strengthen customer discovery within enterprise and entrepreneurship education, this session will offer a tested approach, a working example and an opportunity to exchange practice with colleagues from across the sector.