Exploring the Future of the Engineer Profession: The Effect of the Entrepreneurial Engineers’ Mental Models on Their Opportunity Recognition Capabilities

This work evaluates the effects of entrepreneurial engineers' mental models on their opportunity recognition (OR) capability. We use mental model proxies such as entrepreneurial experience, knowledge, and education. Through a self-applied survey, we found that entrepreneurial experience, entrepreneurial education (EE), and OR are unidimensional constructs. Both EE and entrepreneurial experience show a significant positive effect on OR. Both the mean of OR and entrepreneurial knowledge (EK) show a significant difference between individuals with or without entrepreneurship experience. EE shows a significant positive effect on EK. Also, age shows a positive effect on EK. We use for the first time in OR literature the semantic perspective of mental model theory to discuss and explain research results.