2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Canadian economy is currently the 9th economy in the world in terms of GDP. Technology driven entrepreneurship is growingly important for job creations and wealth creations in terms of national competitive advantage. On the one hand, engineering students demand for more exposure and training on innovation and entrepreneurship as they obtain their technical degrees. On the other hand, the innovative driven employers demand more engineering graduates who can contribute significantly to the innovation process within the organizations. As a result, the universities are required to respond creatively to these growing demands. However, there are very diverse practices in the design and deliver of such programing, it is difficult for the educators and public funders to compare one program to another. For example, the engineering entrepreneurship education may be delivered through courses, certificate, co-op work experience, design and business competition, and other co-curricular activities such as student clubs and hackathons. To further complicate the matter, each school has a different institutional culture and entrepreneurial ambition that may shape the overall definition of entrepreneurship education and its success. One institute may focus on design, another might focus on sustainability. Some programs may emphasize inspiration and ideation stage, while others on the scalability of the firm.
In this work, the authors attempt to develop a framework to align the institutional culture and entrepreneurial ambitions with their own program design. The constructive alignment process will provide a unique understanding of the current practices in engineering entrepreneurship education. Our contribution is to provide clarity for diverse practices in the engineering entrepreneurship pedagogy.