Special Session: Calling All Voices: Transforming Scholarly Perception of an Entrepreneurial Mindset Framework Through a Community-Led Delphi Study

The 3Cs framework, emphasizing curiosity, connections, and creating value, was developed by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) to integrate an entrepreneurial mindset into engineering education. The framework has gained acceptance among practitioners, but the lack of explicit ties to existing theoretical literature has hindered its use in entrepreneurial mindset and engineering education research. This special session is part of a larger Kern Family Foundation-funded project to develop and disseminate a literature-based grounding for the 3Cs framework that can provide a foundation for research using the framework through existing scholarly literature. Building on scoping reviews of the literature, the session adapts the Delphi method to collaboratively operationalize each part of the 3Cs framework with members of the entrepreneurship and engineering education communities. Participants will rate their agreement with high-level constructs associated with each C, as identified from the literature, and engage in peer-to-peer discussions to reach a collective understanding of the operationalization of each C. Expected outcomes for participants include a deeper understanding of how the 3Cs framework aligns with broader theoretical perspectives in existing literature, as well as insights for leveraging the 3Cs in entrepreneurial mindset-related program development, research, and assessment. In addition, the facilitation team will use the information gathered during this and four other similar sessions to develop its literature-based foundation for the 3Cs framework, produce a set of highly citable references to support work using the 3Cs, and disseminate project findings through KEEN resources, archival publications, and public media.