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Abstract
Competitive growth in today's economy requires engineers to possess innovation skills to create novel designs. An entrepreneurial mindset enables people to think and then act in a certain way to discover, evaluate, and exploit opportunities by understanding the value proposition of a new idea, identifying the potential market, and adapting ideas to meet the needs and desires of various customer segments. However, secondary students often lack formalized opportunities to look for new opportunities for innovative design, act upon their design ideas, and transform those ideas into reliable investments of time and resources during their school experiences. Therefore, we propose that secondary engineering teachers can employ established entrepreneurial pedagogical interventions as a means to promote more authentic engineering design activities in STEM learning environments. The interventions can aid students in making more informed design decisions, engage them in developing viable solutions to authentic problems while investigating opportunities for exploiting their ideas, and thus, support the innovation capabilities of our future. Consequently, this article highlights methods in which to integrate an entrepreneurial mindset within high school STEM classrooms, specifically those focused on engineering.
Introduction
The innovation capacity of the U.S. continues to be a national concern as the economy increasingly depends on developing an innovation-capable workforce while establishing viable industries (National Academy of Engineering, 2015; 2017). Currently, the country is challenged to remain a leader in the global marketplace by meeting the STEM-related job demands that drive the country's advancement as very little education focuses on innovation (National Academy of Engineering, 2015). As described in the 2015 Educate to Innovate: Factors that influence Innovation report, innovative thinking should be an expectation of the education community, and all students should be exposed to it through a variety of educational formats and delivery methods. Today, competitive growth requires individuals who possess more than just the technical skills to develop a new product design. Instead, it is believed that individuals should develop an entrepreneurial mindset to further their contribution to their own personal success and to that of an organization in which they belong (Bosman & Fernhaber, 2018). This type of mindset can enable people to think and then act in a certain way to discover, evaluate, and exploit opportunities by understanding the value proposition of a new...