Empathy, persuasiveness and knowledge promote innovative engineering and entrepreneurial skills

Abstract

An increasing number of experts considers that durable skills are needed to prepare the professionals that will tackle the challenges of the 21^st century. However, a clear overview of which skills are the most relevant for specific learning outcomes has not been reached. In this work, we present a simplified conceptual framework for the training of engineers to be more innovative and entrepreneurial. We introduce three core components or ingredients: knowledge, persuasiveness and empathy. These ingredients can be used to initiate a necessary shift in how students are educated in fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. A Challenge Based Learning context is proposed for developing persuasiveness and empathy as durable skills. We also present a six-step procedure as a guideline to turn the knowledge, persuasiveness, and empathy framework into actionable items. This framework enriches the toolbox of durable skills that needs to be taught during the educational process, and in the professional practice of (chemical) engineers. We propose to explicitly teach the importance of durable people-oriented skills in combination with technical courses, ideally spreading the focus over the whole curricula.