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The main point of these analyses is to find out the skills and capabilities engineers should have in order to act successfully in the field of innovation.

The main approach is the identification of the profiles which are expected by the enterprises and companies from their engineers. The actual literature and scientific studies are screened in order to identify evidences for the characteristics of innovative engineers.

This study shows that professional, methodological, social, and personal competencies are important factors for innovation engineers in order to be successful in their professional life.

The final result of this analysis can be used as a guideline for universities and institutes of higher education to enrich their study courses in engineering with important elements of innovation engineering in order to fill the gap between the requested profiles of innovation engineers companies need and the profiles of university graduates.

This study aims, from the perspective of the recovery of sustainability, to develop a framework on sustainability and innovation in the formation of engineers in the courses of Engineering in the Brazilian Amazon.

For this work, a quantitative approach was adopted in the research process. A survey instrument was developed from the main evidence in the literature, the electronic instrument in Google Forms, was sent in the period from November 2022 to February 2023 to engineering students from public institutions in the Brazilian eastern Amazon, who had 80% of the course completed and graduates.

Of the students and graduates who responded to the survey, 58% are male and 42% female, with an average age of 24 years, 72% who have the 8th semester, 28% graduates. As for the practices, they stand out with the highest average degree of agreement in the innovation aspect formation of partnerships and fostering creativity and innovation; in the sustainability aspect the study of sustainability helps to understand the environmental, social and economic challenges and importance of training for sustainability and innovation; in the sustainable recovery aspect, the interaction between university and local community and new research can contribute to the recovery of sustainability and in the SDGs 6 and 8.

This paper presents the perceptions of engineering students and graduates from the Brazilian Amazon, which is considered one of the most strategic regions for the country and internationally in terms of environmental challenges. The main evidence shows that there is a need to adapt academic curricula, seeking to focus on projects that promote participation and the creation of trends aimed at social problems and the current demands of the society in which they are inserted.

This paper investigates the critical role of entrepreneurial computer engineers in driving innovation and accelerating economic growth through the creation of technological businesses. By analyzing their contributions to innovation ecosystems, this paper aims to provide insights into the unique impact these engineers have within the entrepreneurial landscape. The study underscores the need for tailored policies that harness the potential of entrepreneurial computer engineers to achieve macroeconomic objectives amidst ever-changing economic complexities.

To examine the significance of entrepreneurial computer engineers within the innovation ecosystem, this study uses bibliometric analysis with VOS viewer to explore existing literature on engineering and entrepreneurship.

Using bibliometric analysis, the authors reveal a network of interconnected skills such as risk-taking, self-determination and project-based learning, evident in the co-occurrence of keywords.

The entrepreneurial computer engineer plays a central role in steering technical innovation and fostering sustainable economic growth within the field of computer engineering. The authors pinpoint specific skills and strategic pathways crucial for the growth and development of entrepreneurial computer engineers, emphasizing the unique contributions and challenges within this domain.

This paper addresses the under-researched topic of engineering entrepreneurship in relation to innovation, aiming to provide knowledge and insights into the intersection of engineering and entrepreneurship. By examining this nexus, the paper contributes to filling the gap in existing literature and offers valuable perspectives for both academia and industry.

This purpose of this study is to explore how the public client, the engineering consultant and the sub-consultant perceive and address innovation outcomes and processes in the planning and design phase of infrastructure projects.

An explorative single-case study of a public infrastructure project was carried out. A multi-dimensional innovation framework, including innovation outcomes and processes, was applied.

Innovation outcomes in terms of products and processes from the engineering consultant’s work in the planning and design phase hold untapped potential for enhancing innovation in construction projects. Additionally, findings indicate that sub-consultants from outside the construction industry (i.e. external knowledge resources) play a crucial role in introducing more radical innovations based on adaptation.

The findings provide an empirical illustration of a further developed innovation framework that can be used by both scholars and practitioners to analyze and discuss the multi-dimensional concept of innovation in the construction context. Additionally, the findings highlight the importance of capturing perceptions of various actors regarding innovation outcomes and processes to facilitate innovation in an inter-organizational context.

Purpose – In this chapter, we report on the lessons of cross-disciplinary collaborative workshop between sociologists and engineering educators to synthesize what is known about legitimating and disseminating educational reform and to develop a research agenda for what needs to be known in order to spread educational reform and to overcome on-the-ground resistance to change.

Methodology/approach – This chapter is based on a case study of this workshop, describing the “white papers” prepared by participants prior to the workshop and the research agendas that emerged from discussions of them during the workshop and after.

Findings – The workshop resulted in a sophisticated research agenda as well as some modest efforts to create cross-disciplinary links to implement it. However, a one-time workshop did not overcome institutional barriers to this kind of activity.

Research limitations – Since this is a case study of a single collaboration we cannot generalize to all cross-disciplinary collaborations, although it does provide an example of what works to facilitate cross-disciplinary efforts and what obstacles remain.

Practical implications – An advantage to the workshop was the absence of institutional barriers to cross-disciplinary collaboration. Attendees were removed from their institutions, departments, disciplines, and turf battles. However, without increased institutional support for cross-disciplinary efforts, such as this one, the value of the social sciences for diffusing the innovations of science and engineering reform movements may not be realized.

Novel engineering designs are usually infeasible for manufacturing or fail to meet the required performance. The dissimilar functionalities and mindsets between design and manufacturing pose challenges, as well as opportunities for innovation projects. This paper aims to report the innovation process that prototyped a novel engineering design of a haptic device in an engineering research lab. The innovation process went through several design generations. Interaction between design and manufacturing drove the innovation toward both better and worse directions between generations.

Using the case research method, the steps of theoretical proposition development, case selection, data collection, data analysis and theory modification were followed. By interviewing the key persons, the characteristics, issues and recommendations for improvement of the innovation process were identified.

It was found that technical issues were not the hurdles in the innovation process. Instead, managing the inter-organizational mechanism proved critical to its eventual success. The educational gap between the design and manufacturing groups gave rise to communicational and perceptional distance, while the gap in terms of work experience between the two groups enlarged that distance.

The research results may be limited to cases with similar organizational and technological contexts.

Within an organization, the design and the manufacturing divisions are separated by a functional gap. The functional gap should be managed with multiple views, namely, technical, personal and organizational perspectives. The identified innovation process could help bridge such a gap and facilitate innovative engineering designs in research institutes.

The effectiveness of the innovation process was, thus, found to be determined by the positive or negative reinforcement of these two gaps between the design and manufacturing of the research institute.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of two climates for innovation constructs, namely, leadership and organisational culture, on workplace innovation and career satisfaction.

This study used structural equation modelling to test the data from 3,125 engineering professionals in the Australian Public Service (APS).

The structural model indicated that leadership for innovation and ambidextrous culture for innovation influenced workplace innovation which, in turn, improved career satisfaction. Moreover, modelling revealed a significant relationship between ambidextrous culture for innovation and career satisfaction. This study also investigated mediation effects and revealed both simple and sequential mediation paths in the model. It was found that improving workplace innovation and career satisfaction through recognition of an engineer’s contribution to their agency would assist in retaining and advancing in-house engineering expertise.

The structural model could be used to address current shortages of engineering professionals in the Commonwealth of Australia departments. The findings emphasise the importance of Commonwealth departments providing opportunities for their engineers to engage in creative and innovative projects which enhance their professional career.

This study fills the gap in the innovation literature by exploring the relationships through which socio-psychological factors affect workplace innovation and career satisfaction on the innovation process for engineering professionals in the APS.

Reverse innovation plays an important role in the innovation catch-up by latecomer enterprise. With the development of economic globalization, reverse innovation of the latecomer enterprise research has received increased attention day by day. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the key success factors and the realization mechanism of reverse innovation of the latecomer engineering and technical services enterprise.

This paper adopts the grounded theory analysis as the research method, by analyzing the phenomenon, collating the results, mining through the systematic data and verifying the theory temporarily. Therefore, it is ideal for the research to build the theory by analyzing the phenomenon. Before the serious coding begins, the reliability of coders is first examined. Coders extract some sample as the first test sample; then, three coders code according to the description and requirements and calculate the coding results according to the formulas that the noted scholar Holsti has proposed. Then, the authors perform the coding three times that include open coding, axial coding and selective coding, and then, the key factor model of reverse innovation of the engineering and technical service enterprise is refined.

The investigation reveals that technology localization, connection with the international market and industrial chain integration are the key success factors of reverse innovation of the latecomer engineering and technological service enterprise. Meanwhile, the latecomer enterprise gives full attention to local comprehensive comparative advantage to carry out technology localization during the reverse innovation. The diversified international coupling mechanism is an important support for technology localization. The engineering and technical service enterprise needs to pay attention to the service chain of the vertical integration in the process of reverse innovation.

The paper enriches the related research of reverse innovation based on a new industry and provides management support for innovation catch-up of the latecomer enterprises that have a big technological gap when compared with the multi-national companies.

Emergencies have become a growing concern for organizations, which require flexibility to respond to changes in emergencies based on their contingency, dynamic evolution rapidly and other characteristics. In order to enhance the ability of engineering project organizations to cope with emergencies, this study explores the mechanism of its influence on knowledge innovation under emergencies from the perspective of bricolage theory, and provides a new perspective for the traditional preplanning-based handling of emergencies by improvising to enhance the ability and results of improvisation.

Firstly, a structural equation model of the relationship between bricolage and knowledge innovation was constructed by introducing improvisational behavior and serendipity as mediating and moderating variables of the relationship between bricolage and knowledge innovation based on bricolage theory; secondly, drawing on previous well-established measurement scales about bricolage, improvisational behavior, knowledge innovation and serendipity, a questionnaire survey was conducted with different types of engineering project managers and technicians in Gansu Province as the research subjects, and 238 valid questionnaires were returned; finally, validation factor analysis and correlation analysis were performed, and the hypothesized relationships were verified using AMOS 24.0 software.

The results show that bricolage positively influences improvisational behavior; improvisational behavior positively influences knowledge innovation; bricolage positively influences knowledge innovation; bricolage influences knowledge innovation through the mediating role of improvisational behavior and serendipity positively moderates the impact of resource bricolage on knowledge innovation.

It reveals the mechanism of knowledge innovation of engineering project organizations in response to emergencies and the innovation mechanism of the episodic nature of emergency decision-making, extends the applicable context of bricolage theory and provides a new perspective for engineering project organizations in response to emergencies.

The purpose of this paper is to present the Strategic Research Consortium Centre for Technological Innovation in Building and Civil Engineering (A-CITEEC) and its scientific strategy for the promotion of research and higher education in building and civil engineering.

By means of an approach based on the comparison of strategic actions with other research consortia, a scientific programme is designed following innovative research areas.

The A-CITEEC is a supra-group structure that strengthens scientific research and provides new opportunities for innovation and technology transfer at the national and international level.

The main objective of the A-CITEEC is to improve and intensify research and knowledge transfer in the fields of engineering and sustainable construction. As a direct consequence, this consortium of research groups is promoting community well-being, economic development and optimization of ecosystem services.

The A-CITEEC enhances collaborations in the national and international university community to achieve their objectives. Other remarkable activities encouraged by the consortium are the organization of scientific events, such as visits to the research centre, the promotion of the research transfer to companies and encouraging the presence of women researchers.

The achievement of the objectives and research lines by the A-CITEEC members will lead to satisfying the sustainable development goals (SDGs), priorities of the RIS3 Strategy, Spanish Strategy for Science and Technology and Innovation 2013–2020 and with the European Strategy H2020.

The scientific activities shown in this case study are intended to ensure the continuity of the group consortium, which is unique at the regional level in the field of building and civil engineering.