Abstract:

Today, being innovative has become the most important element of development and survival in all industries where there is intense competition. To be innovative, it is necessary to have qualified and entrepreneurial manpower, as well as an enabling environment for the generation and dissemination of new ideas and mechanisms to support innovation. Encouraging entrepreneurship results in the transformation of young people's qualities such as creativity, innovation and contribution to employment into social contribution and will instill a sense of self-confidence in young people, teach them to take risks, and help them develop their ability to make quick decisions, foresight and analysis.

Individuals need to have innovative characteristics in order to differentiate themselves from their competitors in both their professional and educational lives. Innovation is the process of transforming a new and valuable knowledge or idea into a product or service, and turning it into a social benefit. Helping those with entrepreneurial aspirations can make positive economic and social contributions to society. Encouraging entrepreneurship will result in the transformation of young people's qualities such as creativity, innovation and contribution to employment into social contribution and will instill a sense of self-confidence in young people, teach them to take risks, and help them develop their ability to make quick decisions, foresight and analysis.

The aim of this study is to reveal the perceptions of innovativeness according to entrepreneurship levels for 958 students studying at the Faculty of Engineering of five state universities in Istanbul. 10.2% of the students had a very low entrepreneurship level, 10.6% had a low entrepreneurship level, 33.9% had a medium entrepreneurship level, 30.2% had a high entrepreneurship level, and 15.1% had very high entrepreneurship levels. Moreover,in terms of innovative perception, 34.2% of the students were identified as innovators, 19.9% as pioneers, 19.4% as questioners, 17.8% as skeptics and 8.7% as traditionalists. The characteristics of the perception of innovativeness differed significantly according to entrepreneurship levels. Looking at the rank averages, for the innovative, pioneering, questioning and skeptical traits, those with a very high level of entrepreneurship responded more in the direction of agree, while for the traditionalist trait, those with a very high level of entrepreneurship responded more in the direction of agree. A significant difference was found in terms of entrepreneurship levels in terms of gender. When the mean ranks are analyzed, very low, low and medium level entrepreneurship is higher among women, whereas high and high level entrepreneurship is higher among men. A significant difference was found in terms of gender in terms of innovativeness characteristics. When the rank averages are analyzed, it is observed that women are higher for the traits of innovator, questioner and skeptic, while men are higher for the traits of pioneer and traditionalist. The level of entrepreneurship and perception of innovativeness differ significantly in terms of the department studied. For the perception of innovation, students from the departments of machinery, industry and environment have a higher perception. The lowest department for entrepreneurship was determined as mining engineering and the lowest department for innovation perception was determined as geological engineering.

Keywords:

Students' Perception, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, University Students, University, Higher Education, Statistical Analysis.