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。过去15年里，大学里的创业教育一直在迅速扩展，希望帮助培养下一代企业家。工程学院一直是最活跃的参与者之一，因为他们的学生有能力和培训在一个迅速发展的以技术为基础的经济中进行创新。大学和学院的创业教育既有可能提高大学系统正在进行的基础研究的商业化比率，也有可能提供基本的心态发展，使更多的工程师和科学家在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，这些技能让有创业精神的人为失败做好准备，或者在失败时为他们提供支持。这项研究将加深对大学和学院在创业失败之前和经历创业失败时在课程和联合课程规划中支持创业者的方法的理解。该项目的目标是确定导致积极适应行为的教学策略和干预措施，并帮助创业者在面临失败时学习并保持创业方向。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。目前尚不清楚是否正在进行关于项目/创业失败的充分准备和教育，以适当地装备具有创业意识的工程专业学生，使他们能够从创业失败中学习和成长。这项研究将通过识别创业团队中学生经历的不同类型的失败，以及理解失败前倾向和失败后反应之间的关系，来增加关于学生创业失败的知识体系。这个项目将采用定性的方法来研究现在和以前的工科学生，他们(共同)创建了一家创业公司，作为大学创业计划的一部分，并且他们的公司已经停止运营，没有退出事件。研究问题是：RQ1：从事创业工作的学生经历了哪些不同类型的创业失败？RQ2：经历创业失败的学生有哪些不同的反应方式(即识别适应和不适应失败后的反应)？RQ3：导致经历创业失败的学生表现出适应性或非适应性反应(失败前的倾向)的不同因素或事件是什么？RQ4：学生创业者报告接受了哪些教育方法来帮助他们为创业失败做好准备并做出回应？这项研究将提供对这些工程企业家失败前和失败后的处置和反应的初步了解，并结合影响这些处置和反应的教育规划(如果有的话)。这个项目的目标是建立和传播教育规划方面的知识，这些知识对面临失败事件的具有创业精神的学生是有益的。该项目还将提供加强教学方法的方向，教育工作者可以使用这些方法来更好地教授和支持那些可能面临或正在面临失败事件的学生，作为大学创业计划的一部分。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.