CAREER: Measuring and Modeling Innovation and Risk in Engineering Design

这个学院早期职业（Career）奖的研究目标是调查小型新企业与大型成熟企业相比，工程设计创新和风险平衡有何不同，从而建立有助于改进工程设计方法和流程发展的因素模型。假设检验的数据将从已公布的获奖产品清单、对NAICS代码定义的选定行业中的美国新创企业和大公司的调查，以及与新创企业合作的数据中收集。一个工程设计水平因素对新企业成功的预测模型将被开发。这是发现工程设计方法在新企业和大公司中应该如何不同的第一步。这项研究将导致如何平衡成功的关键贡献者/障碍之一的知识：创新与技术风险。这些新知识将转化为有效的教学方法，立即应用于学生的设计项目，并通过研讨会和学术出版物转移到其他机构。如果成功，这项工作将提高在工程设计过程中模拟风险和创新的能力，并且由于反映了小型风险问题，将导致对国家整体经济至关重要的新企业取得更大的成功。通过与合作的新技术风险中心的合作，这项工作将对当地工业产生直接影响。在全国范围内，这些大学附属的新企业为经济贡献了340亿美元。通过同地设计项目与教学相结合，将有助于培养工程企业家。为了吸引对STEM职业的追求，并与女性工程师协会合作，研究结果被纳入当地中学女生的年度一日设计项目。最后，所有成果将在多个层面上发表，包括期刊论文、与当地企业家论坛共进午餐以及国内和国际会议。

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career (CAREER) award is to investigate how engineering design innovation and risk balance differs in small new ventures, as opposed to larger more mature corporations, so as to model contributing factors that will enable development of improved engineering design methods and processes. Data for the hypothesis testing will be gathered from published lists of award winning products, a survey of US new ventures and larger companies in selected industries defined by NAICS codes, and from partnering new ventures. A predictive model of engineering design level factors contributing to new venture success will be developed. This is an initial step toward discovering how engineering design methods should be different in new ventures as opposed to larger companies. This research will result in knowledge on how to balance one of the key contributor/barrier trade-offs to success: innovation versus technical risk. This new knowledge will be transferred into a validated teaching methodology that will be immediately applied in student design projects and that will be transferred to other institutions through workshops and scholarly publications. If successful, this work will increase the ability to model risk and innovation during the engineering design process and, due to the reflection of small venture issues, will lead to greater success of new ventures that are vital to the overall economy of the nation. The work will have an immediate effect on local industry through collaborations with a partnering new technology venture center. On the national scale, such university affiliated new ventures have contributed $34 billion to the economy. The integration to teaching through the co-located design projects will help educate engineering entrepreneurs. In hopes of enticing pursuit of STEM careers and in collaboration with the Society for Women Engineers, the research results are incorporated into an annual One Day Design project for local middle school girls. Finally, all results will be published at multiple levels including journal papers, brown bag lunches with a local entrepreneurs' forum, and national and international conferences.