Entrepreneurial motivations for high-interest students

Abstract

As the call to increase entrepreneurial training within academic engineering institutions increases, understanding the target audience and its motivations becomes increasingly important. This qualitative research study provides insight into the backgrounds and motivations of engineering students who exhibited high entrepreneurial interest during their sophomore or junior year. Students taking a Technical Communication for Engineers course were given a series of entrepreneurial interest questions. Those students whose scores indicated high interest were invited to participate in interviews to discuss their interest. Some of the students received entrepreneurship peer mentoring, while others did not. Grounded Theory analysis was performed, and the central theme of family role models was identified. Additional themes include other role models, communication, persistence, and overlap of skills between engineering and entrepreneurship.