Exploring the entrepreneurial engineer from a value creation perspective

The Grand Societal Challenges, such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the recognition of entrepreneurship as a lifelong learning competence, are raising interest in the engineering field. For engineering students, this is an opportunity to experience sustainable value-creation through innovative entrepreneurial education. Accordingly, they should be educated on applying entrepreneurial competences in environments that are complex, uncertain, and have a value-laden character. From an educational design lens, designing entrepreneurial education for engineers from a value-creation perspective requires exploring and analysing desired states of future entrepreneurship education for engineers. Specifically, this implies understanding who the entrepreneurial engineers are and what their value-creation process looks like to be able to translate such understanding into future educational interventions.

Approach: This paper shares the findings of a survey with open-ended questions shared among Faculty and professionals of the engineering industry. We gather data including (1) perspectives of entrepreneurship, (2) characteristics of the entrepreneurial engineer, (3) value creation process (4) desired contribution to society and (5) role of the entrepreneurial engineer when facing sustainable transitions and transformations.

Results: We are currently developing and iterating the codebook based on 5 responses. Results reflect the findings of this process and are, therefore, in an early stage.

Implications: This paper shares part of the findings of the PhD position of the 4TU project “Educating the Entrepreneurial Engineer”. These help in designing learning interventions for educating future Entrepreneurial Engineers, and they contribute to the overarching theme “The future of engineering education”.

Value/Originality: The findings of the study contribute to setting the ground for future studies aimed at mapping how the 4TUs are currently fostering Entrepreneurial Engineers. Ultimately, these will add value in building a common curriculum strategy at the 4TUs and beyond for educating the future entrepreneurial engineer. The originality of this contribution lies in the inclusion of faculty and industry in the design process, contributing to bridge theory and practice.