Educate to Innovate
A new framework aims to foster entrepreneurial attitudes and boost engineering students’ societal impact.
By Ann F. McKenna, Gary Lichtenstein, Phil Weilerstein, and Thema Monroe-White
Globalization and rapid advances in technology have spurred initiatives to prepare engineers to be adaptive, flexible, and forward thinking. Engineering programs around the country urge students to consider the value added by their designs in terms of societal impact, with a focus on developing solutions that meet a range of stakeholder needs. By emphasizing the value and impact of technological solutions, engineering educators can promote an entrepreneurial mindset.
A search of the literature from 1945 to 2017 found 33,451 references to entrepreneurial mindset (EM). Some 70 percent of these studies were published in the past decade and nearly half of these include references to engineering education. Three large-scale national initiatives—Stanford University’s Epicenter, the Kern Entrepreneurial Education Network, and the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps)—are examples of efforts to transform engineering education through EM in order to achieve lasting and meaningful impact on society and industry.
While there is increasing consensus that entrepreneurship education is important for engineers, there is also fragmentation with regard to a common language or an organizing framework for situating our disparate activities. To tackle this challenge, Arizona State University and VentureWell convened nearly two dozen participants from 15 institutions and organizations for a two-day symposium designed to stimulate conversations and produce tangible results on three objectives: build a community of researchers and practitioners, define a framework, and identify and measure the EM dimensions within that framework.
As organizers, we had hoped that the workshop would result in a coherent, shared understanding of how to coordinate efforts to teach, study, and practice EM, particularly within engineering programs. One thing we learned is that, at this nascent stage, it is too early to contain the concept within tidy boxes and arrows. Nevertheless, two notable contributions did emerge from the symposium. The first was a framework that organized our thinking into three broad areas: the what, why, and how of EM. Second, the symposium resulted in a special volume of 11 papers on EM, organized by the what, why, and how frameworks, published in the October 2018 Advances in Engineering Education (AEE).
The what of EM reveals challenges in researching and practicing a topic that has multiple definitions and myriad facets. Authors of papers in this section of the AEE special issue wrestle with the multidimensionality of EM, which defies simplification. Taken together, the articles add complexity but at the same time help researchers and practitioners define and identify how their work fits into the multidimensional EM landscape. The next section explores why entrepreneurship education is relevant in engineering schools. What are the value propositions for faculty? What is the value added to students and to industry? Finally, the how section offers several perspectives on teaching and assessing EM. Authors offer proven strategies, including addressing the critical question of how to fit EM into an already stressed engineering curriculum. Not surprisingly, the challenges related to defining EM also confound efforts to assess it. Here, too, authors offer practical solutions, including an instrument.
The what, why, and how EM framework and AEE articles that explore it are a starting point. A core tenet of entrepreneurial mindset is to create value. Creating value often involves taking risks, moving a project ahead without having all the information, keeping an open mind, and iterating with agility based on experience and new data. The AEE special issue exemplifies the EM mentality. We hope the contributions promote readers’ critical reflection, useful insights, and increased clarity about the goals, outcomes, methods, and assessment of entrepreneurial mindset. Such outcomes would move researchers and practitioners incrementally closer to realizing the promise of EM for inspiring graduates to design innovations that enhance engineering work and create extraordinary value for society and industry.
Ann F. McKenna is director of the Polytechnic School and a professor of engineering at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, where Gary Lichtenstein is director of entrepreneurial mindset program effectiveness. Phil Weilerstein is president of VentureWell. Thema Monroe-White is an assistant professor of management at Berry College. Their article was adapted from the Fall 2018 Advances in Engineering Education special issue on entrepreneurial mindset.
Image Courtesy of Getty Images