CAREER: Measuring and Modeling Innovation and Risk in Engineering Design

该学院早期职业生涯（CAREER）奖的研究目标是调查小型新企业的工程设计创新和风险平衡如何不同，而不是更大的更成熟的公司，以便建模有助于改进工程设计方法和流程的发展的因素。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企业和大型公司的调查以及合作的新企业中收集。 将开发一个有助于新企业成功的工程设计水平因素的预测模型。这是发现工程设计方法在新企业中与大公司不同的第一步。这项研究将导致知识如何平衡的关键贡献者/障碍权衡成功：创新与技术风险。这些新的知识将被转移到一个有效的教学方法，将立即应用于学生的设计项目，并将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建模风险和创新的能力，并且由于对小企业问题的反映，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。这项工作将通过与合作的新技术风险中心的合作，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。通过共同定位的设计项目整合到教学中，将有助于教育工程企业家。 为了吸引对STEM职业的追求，并与女工程师协会合作，研究成果被纳入当地中学女生的年度“一天设计”项目。最后，所有结果将在多个层面上发表，包括期刊论文，与当地企业家论坛的棕色午餐，以及国家和国际会议。

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.