The research objective of this Faculty Early Career (CAREER) award is to investigate how engineering design innovation and risk balance differs in small new ventures, as opposed to larger more mature corporations, so as to model contributing factors that will enable development of improved engineering design methods and processes. Data for the hypothesis testing will be gathered from published lists of award winning products, a survey of US new ventures and larger companies in selected industries defined by NAICS codes, and from partnering new ventures. A predictive model of engineering design level factors contributing to new venture success will be developed. This is an initial step toward discovering how engineering design methods should be different in new ventures as opposed to larger companies. This research will result in knowledge on how to balance one of the key contributor/barrier trade-offs to success: innovation versus technical risk. This new knowledge will be transferred into a validated teaching methodology that will be immediately applied in student design projects and that will be transferred to other institutions through workshops and scholarly publications.
If successful, this work will increase the ability to model risk and innovation during the engineering design process and, due to the reflection of small venture issues, will lead to greater success of new ventures that are vital to the overall economy of the nation. The work will have an immediate effect on local industry through collaborations with a partnering new technology venture center. On the national scale, such university affiliated new ventures have contributed $34 billion to the economy. The integration to teaching through the co-located design projects will help educate engineering entrepreneurs. In hopes of enticing pursuit of STEM careers and in collaboration with the Society for Women Engineers, the research results are incorporated into an annual One Day Design project for local middle school girls. Finally, all results will be published at multiple levels including journal papers, brown bag lunches with a local entrepreneurs' forum, and national and international conferences.
