Focus on the role of motivation and emotions as part of engineering entrepreneurial definitions

pose an intriguing question: Might understanding how college students characterize a new

graduate’s entrepreneurial action be crucial for expanding a definition of innovation and

infusing new elements in the curriculum? In this paper, we utilized students’ interpersonal

perceptions of another to parse out the definition of innovativeness, finding that gender matters

for achievement motivation and affiliation motivation in conceptualizing an

engineer/founder/CEO. The study included two independent elements (gender cue prompt and

gender of participant) and studied effects of these variables on both the story-oriented dependent

variable and mood scale reports for the characterization of the engineer/founder/CEO. Eightythree participants on both coasts of the United States and in Northern Europe provide vivid

action shots and stunning motivational characterizations. Findings indicate negativity manifests

significantly in an individual’s interpersonal perception of a new graduate’s decision to step

away from their founded company, revealing that interpersonal perceptions vary by gender for

motivation and negative emotion.