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

创业活动对于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扩大，希望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，因为他们的学生的能力和培训，在一个迅速发展的技术为基础的经济创新。 大学和学院内的创业教育有可能提高大学系统中进行的基础研究的商业化率，并提供基本的思维发展，这将导致更多的工程师和科学家在其职业生涯的某个阶段成为企业家。 由于创业活动涉及的高风险，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技能方面做得很少，这些技能可以帮助有创业意识的人为失败做好准备，或者在失败时为他们提供支持。 这项研究将发展的方法，大学和学院利用课程和课外编程，以支持企业家之前和经历创业失败的理解。 该项目的目标是确定教学策略和干预措施，导致积极的适应行为，并帮助企业家从失败中学习和保持创业方向。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。目前尚不清楚是否有足够的准备和教育围绕项目/创业失败发生适当装备有创业头脑的工程专业学生学习和创业失败中成长。本研究将通过识别学生在创业团队中经历的不同类型的失败，以及了解失败前的处置和失败后的反应之间的关系，增加对学生创业失败的知识体系。 该项目将采用定性方法来研究现任和前任工程专业学生，他们（共同）创立了一个创业企业，作为大学创业计划的一部分，并且他们的企业已经停止运营，没有退出事件。 研究问题是：RQ 1：学生在创业中经历的不同类型的创业失败是什么？第二个问题：经历创业失败的学生有哪些不同的反应方式（即识别适应性和适应不良的失败后反应）？第三个问题：哪些不同的因素或事件导致经历创业失败的学生表现出适应性或适应不良的反应（失败前倾向）？RQ 4：学生创业者报告说，他们接受了哪些教育方法来帮助他们为创业失败做好准备和应对？这项研究将提供一个初步的了解失败前和失败后的处置和这些工程企业家的反应结合教育规划（如果有的话），提供了影响这些处置和反应。 该项目的目标是建立和传播教育规划方面的知识，这对面临失败事件的有思想的学生是有益的。该项目还将提供方向，以增强教学方法，教育工作者可以用来更好地教育和支持学生谁可能面临或正在面临失败的事件，作为大学的创业规划的一部分。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

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.