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1. Gender differences in academic entrepreneurship: experience, attitudes and outcomes among NSF I-CORPS participants

   https://doi.org/10.1108/IJGE-10-2020-0166  

   Epstein, Alanna ; Duval-Couetil, Nathalie ; Huang-Saad, Aileen ( August 2021 , International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship)

   null (Ed.)

   Purpose Expanding access to entrepreneurship training programs can be a method to increase female involvement in technology commercialization only if these programs adequately address the specific challenges facing female faculty and graduate students. In the context of the US National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps) program, this study examines gender differences in prior experience and attitudes towards the training in order to propose improvements to the program design. Design/methodology/approach This quantitative study uses Pearson's Chi-Square and ANOVA tests on survey data from the I-Corps national program ( n  = 2,195), which enrolls faculty members, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and industry experts. Findings In comparison to male participants, female I-Corps participants reported less entrepreneurial experience prior to the program, poorer team relationships during the program and lower entrepreneurial intention and technology commercialization readiness at both the beginning and the end of the program. However, no gender differences were found in positive or negative perceptions of the instructional climate or perceptions of program usefulness. Originality/value This study is unique as it is based on a large-scale dataset drawn from sites across the United States. The results support potential changes to I-Corps and similar programs, including providing more explicit instructions for tasks with which female participants have less prior experience than males (e.g. in applying for patents), offering guidance for team interactions, and providing mentorship to assess whether low self-efficacy is leading women to underestimate the potential success of their projects. 

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2. The Implementation and Assessment of an I-Corps Site at a Southwestern University: Lessons Learned

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--33400  

   Lagoudas, M ; Yoon, S Y ; Boehm, R ( July 2019 , Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   In 2011, the National Science Foundation launched the I-Corps Program and as of today close to one hundred institutions are participating through Nodes or Sites program. While both program focus on providing training and funds to accelerate the implementation of innovative ideas to market, they have different implementation models and thus challenges. For I-Corps Sites, while each institution utilizes similar approaches on the implementation, including an I-Corps team formation, knowledge and skills training, customer discovery and guidance from experienced entrepreneurs, each ecosystem is unique because the program outcomes are closely related to the entrepreneurial culture both on campus and also in the surrounding local community. A major challenge for Sites is recruiting quality teams and having access to qualified mentors to provide guidance to teams. In this paper, we will present the implementation of a Site in a large public institution located away from a large metropolitan area, the challenges we addressed both in recruiting teams and mentors, and how the program has evolved in its current state. In addition, authors will be able to present on data from the program evaluation which will include findings from pre- and post-quizzes on knowledge of entrepreneurship terms and pre- and post-program surveys that captured changes in perceptions of entrepreneurship, such as interest in entrepreneurship, confidence in value position, and self-efficacy in entrepreneurship, marketing/business planning, and customer interview. In this paper, we will present data from five I-Corps Site cohorts representing close to fifty student teams. Since program participants represent a diverse group (33% females and 15% ethnic minorities) and also wide range of educational levels (freshman to graduate students), we are able to evaluate program impact also with respect to gender, race/ethnicity, and classification. This paper will provide valuable information for institutions interested in pursuing an I-Corps grant and to those who are already have a grant but are looking for additional ways to further enhance program impact on their campus. 

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3. APPLYING A ‘MENTOR-PROTEGE’ APPROACH TO BROADENING PARTICIPATION OF HBCUS IN THE NATIONAL INNOVATION NETWORK

   https://doi.org/10.21300/22.3.2022.9  

   McEwen, Thaddeus ; Fields, Jessica ; Jackson, Caesar R ; Keith, Jill ; Cardaci, Cira ; Tran, Nhi ; Blaho, John A ( October 2022 , Technology & Innovation)

   Innovation is one of the most important drivers of economic growth, yet only 8% of minorities,12% of women, and < 0.05% of African Americans are recognized as innovators. However, acomprehensive analysis of nearly all doctoral dissertations from 1977 to 2015 shows that although individuals from under-represented minority groups demonstrated greater scientific innovation, their contributions are rarely further adopted compared to equally impactful contributions by majority groups. In this instance “rarely further adopted,” as noted by Hofstra et al. (1), means that the “novel contributions by gender and racial minorities are taken up by other scholars at lower rates than novel contributions by gender and racial majorities, and equally impactful contributions of gender and racial minorities are less likely to result in successful scientific careers than for majority groups.” Access to the wealth of potential innovations — going largely unnoticed and underutilized — from under-represented minority groups can be achieved, in part, by engaging science and engineering students, faculty, and staff at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in entrepreneurship through the use of the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) curriculum with adaptations to fit the education and research environments at HBCUs. A consortium of three North Carolina universities and the NYC Regional InnovationNetwork (NYCRIN) I-Corps Node established a partnership developing a specialized Lean LaunchPad training program for HBCU students, faculty, and staff. Implementation followeda three-step train-the-trainers ‘mentor-protege’ model, where new instructors ‘see one, do one, be one’ while learning to deliver the curriculum. The overarching goals of this initiativeare to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in broadening participation in I-Corps and mainstreaming the innovation capacities of HBCUs. The authors include instructors from the collaborating institutions, who trained and served as the teaching team for regional and national cohorts. Included are the rationale for creating the program, partnership selection,instructor and team recruitment, best practices for the ‘mentor-protege’ model, and outcomes for the cohorts. This contribution is a unique opportunity for other faculty to learn from practitioners about the challenges and successes involved in creating such a new multi-institutional entrepreneurship training paradigm. 

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4. Training Faculty in Entrepreneurship and Innovation: An Evaluation of the National Science Foundation Innovation-Corps™ Program

   https://doi.org/10.1177/2515127420929383  

   Duval-Couetil, Nathalie ; Huang-Saad, Aileen ; Wheadon, Mandy ( June 2020 , Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy)

   Evaluating the impact of entrepreneurship education is difficult given the heterogeneity of programming which presents challenges related to the generalizability of findings. The National Science Foundation’s Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) program, which incentivizes academic researchers to explore the commercialization potential of their research, offers a unique opportunity to examine the outcomes of entrepreneurship and technology commercialization training from an educational perspective given its standardization across populations and settings. We used the four-level Kirkpatrick Model for evaluating the impact of training and education programs to examine faculty experiences with I-Corps in depth. Using a qualitative inquiry methodology, we conducted 26 interviews with faculty innovators across three large public research institutions. Findings revealed that faculty had positive impressions of the program overall and attributed specific knowledge gains to participation. They also described behavioral changes impacting both their research and teaching. However, participants also identified challenges with I-Corps pedagogy and identified opportunities to improve training. This program evaluation and description of specific learning outcomes (skills, knowledge, attitude, and behaviors) contributes to best practices associated with delivering technology commercialization and entrepreneurship training to academic researchers. 

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5. Qualitative Investigation on the Failure Experiences of Entrepreneurial Engineering Students

   Katona, T. M. ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   null (Ed.)

   Entrepreneurial education has been rapidly expanding within universities over the past 15 years with colleges of engineering being amongst the most active participants in embedding entrepreneurship into curricular and cocurricular activities (Pittaway & Cope, 2007). Well-developed and theoretically grounded educational interventions have been shown to increase entrepreneurial skills and perception among students. (Pittaway & Cope, 2007; Matlay & Caray, 2007; Duval-Couetil & Wheadon, 2013; Duval-Couetil & Rheed-Roads, 2012). Organizations including the National Science Foundation through the Lean Launch Curriculum and I-Corps program, VentureWell through curriculum development grants and their E-Team program, and the Kern Family Foundation through the Kern Entrepreneurial Education Network (KEEN) have provided significant funding to embed and transform entrepreneurial teaching and practice into colleges of engineering (Matthew et al., 2017; Pistrui, Blessing & Mekemson, 2008; Smith et al. 2017). This activity combines with an added emphasis among engineering programs to develop an entrepreneurial mindset among their engineering students with the belief that this will lead to them being more productive and innovative whether their career path leads them into established industry (becoming “intrapreneurs”) or later as entrepreneurs. While this trend toward developing more entrepreneurially minded engineering students is supported by global economic trends and a rapidly changing work environment, one factor has been largely overlooked in this process. Statistically, most entrepreneurial ventures fail, with disproportionately large value being created from a minority of entrepreneurial endeavors (Coats, 2019). Given this fact, until we find ways to drastically increase the success rate of entrepreneurial ventures, as we increase engineering students’ exposure to entrepreneurship, we are also increasing their exposure to failure very early in their careers. With this exposure, it is 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. In this work in progress study, current and former engineering students who formed entrepreneurial ventures and experienced either failure of the venture or significant failure during the venture are interviewed to better understand the influences that led to both adaptive and maladaptive responses to these failures. Participants have been selected from those that have received funding through the national VentureWell E-Team program. This program awards three levels of funding and provides mentorship, training, and networking for the teams. The study uses the framework developed by Henry, Shorter, Charkoudian, Heemstra, and Corwin (2018) in which they associate pre-failure dispositions related to fixed and growth mindset (Dweck, 2000, 2006) and mastery vs. performance disposition (Pintrich, 2000 a, b). Our work will utilize this framework to guide the research, but more importantly will provide a unique context for analysis, specifically within engineering entrepreneurship, which will add to the body of work and expand the understanding of this pre-failure/post-failure disposition framework. Initial interview data and analysis will be presented in the context of this framework with preliminary insights to be shared with those in the field. 

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