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The Entrepreneurial Mindset
Welcome to Entrepreneurial Mindset 101.
An entrepreneurial mindset (EM) is a collection of mental habits that empower you to question, adapt, and make positive change—in your classes, campus, community, and the world.
When combined with the skills and work engineers already do, entrepreneurially minded engineers become powerful agents of societal good.
Doug Melton discusses why this concept of mindset is relevant to educators — and why it's vital for your students' future success.
Discover EM: Take the on-demand module.
Get answers to questions such as "Why engineering & EM?" in this roadmap to mindset.
Introduction to Entrepreneurial Mindset & the 3Cs
Dive into the 3Cs of EM - Curiosity, Connections, and Creating Value.
Get tactics for teaching students to be entrepreneurially minded.
Download posters for your walls.
Apply EM: Get activities for the classroom.
Insert ready-made exercises into existing classes as you explore entrepreneurially minded learning.
Here's a sample of the many activities and projects community members publish on Engineering Unleashed cards:
The Journey to the Top: Board Game to Instill Entrepreneurial Mindset
Duration: 30-40 minutes
Student teams will go through the 4 stages of an entrepreneur’s journey. They'll discuss engineering curriculum knowledge, resources on campus, and legal/ethical issues. They'll also have to decide what to do with their risk/reward cards!
The House of Cards
Duration: 45 minutes
Construct a tower from playing cards and transport it to the testing area without it folding! Students practice critical thinking, customer awareness, teamwork, and learn from failure in this absorbing, single-class activity.
The Biggest Engineering Mistake
Duration: 50 minutes
Do your students have an appreciation for the types of errors made in engineering—and their consequences? Help students see the consequences of assumptions as well as opportunities for new solutions.
Customer Pain Point Discovery and Online Product Redesign Project
Duration: 9.5 hours over 5 weeks
Adopt this project in any discipline involved in the development of consumer products. Students will enjoy making meaningful and realistic modifications and constructing prototypes based on their designs.
Publish EM: Share your own activities.
Upload lesson plans and presentations, student artifacts and papers, and so much more!
Guide to Publishing on Engineering Unleashed
The Card Author Guide walks you through creating your card from start to finish, including what to upload where, how to use tags and keywords, and other features to showcase your content for others to use.
Explore EM: Take a workshop.
Create long-lasting value with the entrepreneurial mindset through National and Specialty workshops.
Engineering Unleashed Faculty Development (EUFD) National Workshops
The EUFD program is designed for you and your career, with collaborative experiences and year-long coaching. Tap into MakerSpark, set up a Problem Solving Studio, integrate EM into your curriculum, and much more.
Specialty Workshops
These workshops are community-led by faculty and institutions around the nation.
These can include workshops leading to Fellowships, embedding EM in your department, and designing impact-driven learning experiences.
Observe EM: Experiences in action.
Faculty, staff, and administrators around the nation share stories and videos about their implementation of the entrepreneurial mindset.
[Blog] Why Unconventional Works in Engineering
"Technology cannot be developed in a vacuum," writes Aaron Sakulich (Worcester Polytechnic Institute). "The context of the social systems in which the technology is deployed is critical to whether or not there will be successful outcomes."
[Video] Surprise! How to Find New Ideas
AnnMarie Thomas (University of St. Thomas), director of Playful Learning Lab, says we get ideas from the people we meet, the stuff on our desks, the things we read, the things we play with, and maybe even what we had for dinner.
[Video] What Kind of Person Do You Want to Be?
Developing good character is a long-term process. So how do you get started? Pat Croskery (late of The Ohio Northern University) used the entrepreneurial mindset to help engineers understand how ethics connects to creating value.
[Blog] Building Faculty Buy-In for Entrepreneurial Mindset
What happens when you try to expand entrepreneurially minded learning beyond your own classroom? Tackle the "change challenge" from a different angle with Julia Williams (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology), including the “CAVE” people: "Colleagues Against Virtually Everything!"