Educating the Engineer Entrepreneur of the Future: A Team Competency Perspective

While the ability to function in multidisciplinary entrepreneurship teams is becoming increasingly important for engineers, research on this topic is still scarce. To address this gap, we propose a framework describing team competencies for engineering entrepreneurship students that builds on the literature on teams, entrepreneurship, and engineering. Our framework is comprised of three components with 12 team-level competencies. First, discipline-driven competencies: technology literacy, adapted innovation capacity, and stakeholder empathy. Second, task-contingent competencies, which include team entrepreneurial efficacy, capability to build diverse networks, ability to communicate and persuade nonengineering audiences, leveraging team resources, team value creation and capturing ability, and team resilience. And finally, third, team-contingent competencies, including shared mental models, team conflict management, and team reflexivity. With this conceptual model, we define key competencies that can help inform the development of relevant pedagogical content and exercises for team-based entrepreneurship programs. We conclude the article with a discussion of implications for practice and future research.