What Factors and Experiences Motivate Innovators? An Expectancy-Value-Cost Approach to Promoting Student Innovation

Abstract

This multi-manuscript dissertation integrated a systematic literature review, interviews, and a developed survey instrument to investigate the expectancies, values, and costs that are involved in motivating current Canadian innovators. Using the Expectancy-Value-Cost framework, the research investigated individual innovators' motivations, but also considered the relationship between individual motivations and the environments (e.g., climates, contexts, and the surroundings of innovators) and strategies (e.g., approaches, interventions, and decisions made by figures of importance within contexts) that they experience. This research offers unique insights in alignment with innovation education that address paucities within the innovation literature at large, particularly the relative lack of research addressing motivations of the innovative individual. The findings of this research nuance and advance the knowledge of promotive and hindering motivational factors that can inform the design of innovation promotion efforts. Innovator participants also identified specific strategies that they use to make their innovating more likely and gave advice to future innovators regarding maximizing expectancies and values, whilst mitigating perceived costs of innovation. Innovators also reflected on their educational experiences to identify the mechanisms that formal and informal education can provide in increasing the prevalence of innovation among Canadian students.