2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Entrepreneurship Support Programs (ESP) in engineering provide education, mentoring, and advising for emerging entrepreneurs and their ventures. The impact of ESPs on engineering students’ professional formation and the acquisition of different attributes—such as creativity, risk-taking, empathy, and curiosity—is largely unknown. Though the social sciences have a strong and robust history of studying many of the attributes, such as creativity and problem-solving, typically associated with entrepreneurship, there has been little connection between this foundational research and the work of ESPs. In fact, two separate systematic reviews have shown that most published work in STEM entrepreneurship education is not theoretically grounded and does not follow standards of quality research approaches in the social sciences. In an effort to bridge the gap between social scientists and engineering entrepreneurship practitioners, the authors are conducting a two-phase study. Phase 1 of the study involves conducting a Delphi study to identify the top entrepreneurial attributes of professionals and researchers who lead ESPs. Phase 2 of the study includes conducting workshops with social scientists who study the attributes and ESP leaders. The goal of the workshops is to identify assessment frameworks grounded in social science theory and literature that will guide in the measurement of the attributes. This session will focus on the results of the Delphi phase.

Delphi study is a common research technique used to achieve consensus among experts (Hasson, Keeney, and McKenna, 2000). Seventy-three participants who lead or have led an ESP, have conducted research in entrepreneurship education, or act as administrators for relevant entrepreneurship programs were invited to participate in the Delphi study. Of the 73 invited, 14 completed at least two rounds of the Delphi study. All participants were experts in the field of engineering entrepreneurship education. The Delphi Study comprised three rounds- brainstorming, narrowing, and ranking. Each phase of the Delphi asked participants to think about three different sets of attributes: 1) entrepreneurial attributes that they thought were important in the development of an entrepreneur, 2) attributes in becoming a successful professional, and 3) attributes in working in an inclusive workspace. In the brainstorming phase, participants were sent an online questionnaire and were asked to brainstorm as many attributes as they could think of. The results of the brainstorming questionnaire were consolidated and used to develop the narrowing questionnaire where participants were asked to narrow the all attributes to the top 10 key attributes The results from the narrowing questionnaire were then used to develop a ranking questionnaire where participants were asked to rank the items on a scale of importance with 1 being the most important to 10 being the least important for each set of attributes. The results of the phase 3 questionnaire were analyzed to identify the attributes that were ranked the highest among a majority of the participants. This paper discusses the findings of the Delphi Study and its implications in assessing the impact of ESP on entrepreneur formation.