Assessing curiosity in the engineering entrepreneurship context: Challenges and future research areas

Curiosity is often included as one of several attributes comprising the entrepreneurial mindset. While research on curiosity has been conducted in the field of psychology for many decades, applied research on the construct in the entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education settings has been lacking. The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance for assessing curiosity in the engineering entrepreneurship education context, focusing on two steps of the assessment process: defining curiosity, a step critical for developing program objectives, and identifying possible sources of evidence. Many unanswered questions remain about how the various dimensions of curiosity apply to the entrepreneurship education context.