The Framework on Innovative Engineering

Leaders in industry and government call today for the development of innovative or entrepreneurial behavior and skills in engineers (innovative is defined in this paper as including commercial execution and/or entrepreneurial behavior). Defining the critical characteristics of an innovative engineer in the different stages of the innovation process (or the Framework for Innovative Engineering, or Framework) was the goal of a team of 14 engineers, entrepreneurs and engineering faculty who participated in two focus group discussions on how successful innovative engineers behave during the innovative process. The first focus group discussion was held in October 2012 during the NSF sponsored Epicenter retreat at Stanford’s Sierra Camp. The second focus group discussion was sponsored by the NCIIA and was held for two days in Atlanta, Georgia at Georgia Tech in June 2013 following the annual ASEE meeting, The research question discussed at those two meetings was: What are the most important characteristics (knowledge, skills or attributes) of an innovative engineer in discovering, developing and implementing and sustaining an improvement-in, or a new or novel, product, process or concept? The purpose of this paper is to document and share the processes used and the resulting definitions and identification of innovative engineering characteristics that were developed during those two Framework focus group discussions.