Training Engineers for Innovation

8 Swimming with Sharks without Being Eaten: How Engineering Students can Learn Creativity, Entrepreneurial Thinking and Innovation

“No matter who you are, the creative spirit can enter your life. It is at hand for anyone who has the urge to tinker, to explore new possibilities, to leave things a little better than before” [GOL 92].

“Technological innovations occur when a need arises or an opportunity presents itself” [NAT 04].

“In modern society, engineers are increasingly expected to move to positions of leadership and to take on additional roles as entrepreneurs” [CRA 14].

“Preparation for entrepreneurship, that is, the starting of a new company, involves unique competencies that can be learned” [AUL 13].

8.1. Introduction

How can engineering students learn to boost their creativity and to think like successful entrepreneurs aiming at innovativeness? Since the discussions on the quality and importance of higher engineering education facing vast challenges of a globalizing world have gained momentum, three subtopics are coming more and more to the fore of higher engineering education:

• – fostering students’ creativity in order to strengthen future engineers’ abilities to generate ideas, to find optimal solutions for complex problems and to invent new processes and products;
• – nurturing students’ entrepreneurial skills in order to transform these novel processes and products into business ideas;
• – encouraging students’ potential to innovate in order to exploit these processes ...