I describe the context for the following essays by Sudipta Basu, Chris Chapman, Bill McCarthy, and Don Moser. Their essays are based on presentations they made at the 2011 Strategic Retreat of the Executive Committee (now titled Board of Directors) of the American Accounting Association (AAA). That retreat was held in Orlando, Florida, on May 23–24, 2011.My remarks are organized as follows. I first describe the genesis of the retreat and its focus. I next describe the charge given to the presenters, as well as attendees. I conclude with some brief remarks about subsequent events, and the potential long-term impact of these four essays and the changes they presage.AAA holds an annual retreat every May in order to plan strategy for the President-Elect's year in office, which begins three months later at the AAA Annual Meeting. As incoming President for the 2011–2012 year, I chose the focus for the event in May 2011.My topic was the level of innovation in accounting scholarship. Specifically, my view was that accounting research is stagnant and rarely introduces new ideas and ways of looking at the issues we study. The specific description I provided to attendees two months before the retreat was as follows:What I sought at the retreat was to have a discussion about the broad issue of innovation in accounting scholarship, which included alternative perspectives on what we do, why we do it, how effective we are, and what, if anything, could be done to change the status quo.My belief that accounting scholarship is overly narrow and lacks innovation stems from several conversations with both senior and junior scholars new to our discipline. These conversations parallel concerns recently expressed by others, such as Demski (2007), Fellingham (2007), Hopwood (2007), Kaplan (2011), and Sunder (2011). My own views on these issues are also articulated in a separate essay (Waymire 2012).The presenters and attendees at the retreat were asked to consider the following:In terms of presenters, I sought a variety of scholarly perspectives within the accounting academy. I ended up asking the four scholars whose essays follow to speak for 30 minutes on the assertion and questions given above. These scholars represent different areas of accounting research and employ different methodologies in their research. They also are thoughtful people who consider issues of scholarship from long histories of personal experience at different types of universities for their current positions and their doctoral education.Attendees at the retreat also included members of the Executive Committee. In addition, incoming co-chairs of the Annual Meeting (Anil Arya and Rick Young), Doctoral Consortium (Sudipta Basu and Ilia Dichev), and New Faculty Consortium (Kristy Towry and Mohan Venkatachalam) Committees of AAA were invited to attend.The primary purpose of the May retreat was “idea generation.” That is, what can we do together as scholars to increase the long-run viability of our discipline? My view was that the retreat and the specific comments by the presenters would provide a basis for a longer-term conversation about the future of accounting scholarship and the role of AAA within that future.Several subsequent events have provided opportunities to continue the conversation about scholarly innovation in accounting. First, I spoke at the AAA Annual Meeting in Denver, August 2011, to update the membership about the initiative now titled “Seeds of Innovation in Accounting Scholarship.” That presentation and the related slides can now be found on AAA Commons (http://commons.aaahq.org/hives/a3d1bee423/summary, or simply www.seedsofinnovation.org). Second, I have written up my own views on these issues and integrated them with the preliminary suggestions developed at the May 2011 retreat (Waymire 2012). Third, further discussion has taken place in the AAA Board and, more importantly, in the new AAA Council. The Council discussion will be ongoing this year, and I expect to form a task force that will consist of Council members and others to develop more specific proposals in January 2012. My hope is that these proposals will cover a broad range of areas that involve AAA publications, consortia, and meetings, and help guide AAA over the next several years as we seek to improve the quality of the accounting discipline.