Collaborative Research: Research Initiation: Educational Methods for Teaching Adaptive Responses to Entrepreneurial Failure

企业活动对国民经济的持续创新、增长和转型至关重要。在过去的15年里，创业教育在大学里迅速发展，希望能帮助培养下一代企业家。工程学院一直是最积极的参与者之一，因为他们的学生在快速发展的技术型经济中具有创新能力和培训。大学和学院内的创业教育有潜力提高大学系统中正在进行的基础研究的商业化率，并提供基本的心态发展，这将导致更多的工程师和科学家在他们职业生涯的某个阶段成为企业家。由于创业活动的高风险，新企业的失败率相当高，但初步研究表明，大学和学院目前在教授具有创业精神的个人应对失败的技能或在失败时给予他们支持方面做得很少。本研究将发展对大学和学院在课程和课外规划中使用的方法的理解，以支持企业家在创业失败之前和经历创业失败时。这个项目的目标是确定教学策略和干预措施，引导积极的适应行为，帮助企业家从失败中学习并在面对失败时保持创业导向。尽管致力于创业的项目和资金有所增加，但在工程教育背景下对创业失败的研究几乎不存在。目前尚不清楚是否正在进行有关项目/风险失败的充分准备和教育，以适当地使具有创业精神的工程专业学生从创业失败中学习和成长。本研究将通过识别创业团队中学生经历的不同类型的失败，以及了解失败前倾向和失败后反应之间的关系，来增加对学生创业失败的知识体系。本项目将采用定性的方法来研究当前和以前的工程专业学生，这些学生（共同）创立了创业企业，作为大学创业规划的一部分，并且他们的企业在没有退出事件的情况下停止运营。研究的问题是：RQ1：从事创业的学生经历的创业失败有哪些不同类型？RQ2：经历过创业失败的学生有哪些不同的反应方式（即识别失败后的适应和不适应反应）？RQ3：有哪些不同的因素或事件导致经历过创业失败的学生表现出适应或适应不良反应（失败前倾向）？RQ4：学生企业家报告说他们接受了哪些教育方法来帮助他们准备和应对创业失败？这项研究将初步了解这些工程企业家在失败前和失败后的性格和反应，并结合所提供的影响这些性格和反应的教育计划（如果有的话）。这个项目的目标是建立和传播有关教育项目的知识，这些知识对面临失败事件的具有创业精神的学生有益。作为大学创业计划的一部分，该项目还将指导教育工作者如何改进教学方法，以便更好地教育和支持可能面临或正在面临失败事件的学生。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Entrepreneurial activity is critical for the continued innovation, growth, and transformation of the national economy. Entrepreneurial education has been rapidly expanding within universities over the past 15 years in hopes of helping develop the next generation of entrepreneurs. Colleges of engineering have been amongst the most active participants because of their students’ ability and training to innovate within a rapidly evolving technology-based economy. Entrepreneurship education within universities and colleges has the potential to both increase the commercialization rate of fundamental research being performed in university systems and to provide fundamental mindset development that will lead to more engineers and scientists to become entrepreneurs at some phase of their careers. Because of the high risk involved in entrepreneurial activity, the failure rate of new ventures is quite high, yet initial research shows that universities and colleges are currently doing very little to teach skills that prepare entrepreneurially minded individuals for failure or to support them at times of failure. This research will develop an understanding of methods that universities and colleges utilize in curricular and co-curricular programming to support entrepreneurs both before and while experiencing entrepreneurial failure. This project’s goal is to identify teaching strategies and interventions that lead to positive adaptive behavior and help the entrepreneurs learn from and maintain an entrepreneurial orientation when faced with failure. Despite the increase of programs and funding dedicated to entrepreneurship, the study of entrepreneurial failure in the context of engineering education is almost non-existent. It is currently unknown whether sufficient preparation and education around project/venture failure is occurring to properly equip entrepreneurially minded engineering students to learn and grow from entrepreneurial failure. This research will add to the body of knowledge on student entrepreneurial failure by identifying the different types of failure that students in entrepreneurial teams experience as well as understanding the relationship between pre-failure dispositions and post-failure responses. This project will employ qualitative approaches to study current and former engineering students who (co)-founded an entrepreneurial venture as part of university entrepreneurship programming, and whose ventures have ceased operation without an exit event. The research questions are: RQ1: What are the different types of entrepreneurial failures that students working on ventures experience? RQ2: What are the different ways that students who experience entrepreneurial failure respond (i.e. identification of adaptive and maladaptive post-failure responses)? RQ3: What are the different factors or events that lead students who experience entrepreneurial failure to exhibit adaptive or maladaptive responses (pre-failure dispositions)? RQ4: What educational methods do student entrepreneurs report receiving to help them prepare for and respond to entrepreneurial failure? The study will provide an initial understanding of the pre-failure and post-failure dispositions and responses of these engineering entrepreneurs combined with the educational programming (if any) that was provided that influenced these dispositions and responses. The goal for this project is to build and disseminate knowledge on educational programming that is beneficial to entrepreneurially minded students who face failure events. The project will also provide direction on enhancements to pedagogical approaches that educators can use to better teach and support students who may face or are facing failure events as part of a universities’ entrepreneurial programming.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.