2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Programs and resources aimed at fostering innovation and an entrepreneurial mindset are now common across many institutions of higher education. However, industrial engineering students often engage minimally with available innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) opportunities at our institution. This project sought to address this challenge at a large public land-grant institution, aiming to increase student engagement with these resources. Recognizing that engineering students tend to prioritize activities that earn course credit, the project focused on bridging the gap between entrepreneurship and engineering. The primary objective of the project was to redesign a required third-year industrial engineering course with a typical enrollment of 50 students to emphasize New Product Development (NPD) and practical manufacturing skills. The redesigned course aimed to connect students to I&E resources while providing hands-on experiences they could use to ground their skills in both manufacturing and entrepreneurial thinking. This initiative involved two key components: the introduction of entrepreneurs into the classroom and the implementation of a hands-on NPD project. Guest entrepreneurs led discussions on real-world challenges in product development while students worked on projects designed to simulate the process of taking a concept to market. Student feedback was collected through surveys, which measured entrepreneurial mindset, identity development, and perceptions of the relevance of I&E education in the context of manufacturing.
The evaluation data suggests that students valued the connection between manufacturing theory and entrepreneurial practices. Survey responses indicated that exposure to I&E concepts and resources in the course helped students develop an entrepreneurial mindset and identity. Additionally, the inclusion of guest entrepreneurs and mentoring for practical NPD projects helped bridge the gap between academic concepts and real-world manufacturing challenges. However, some students felt that this experience came too late in their curriculum to make a significant impact, that the I&E content did not add new insights, and that the implementation did not foster the level of creativity or autonomy they desired. Despite these concerns, the majority of students responded positively, indicating that their labs and projects prepared them for future endeavors and appreciated the limited autonomy to explore their own ideas. The integration of entrepreneurial education into the manufacturing curriculum has shown promising results in encouraging engineering students to engage more deeply with I&E programming. The outcomes of this project suggest students see some value in I&E content integration and that there exists a viable path for other engineering departments to foster entrepreneurial thinking in their students. Students' preferences suggest including I&E content early in their academic careers and increasing autonomy in projects if included in the third year. The methods utilized in this project need adjustment to better fit student expectations and engage a broader subset of students. Future research could build on this work to explore the long-term effects on student outcomes and the broader impact on participation in the I&E ecosystem.