Author(s)

GuangHui Hou

Affiliation(s)

School of Business, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou 510515, Guangdong, China.

Corresponding Author

GuangHui Hou

ABSTRACT

The core of cultivating top-notch innovative talents lies in stimulating their intrinsic motivation. Through in-depth interviews with 35 graduate students and their supervisors in the field of economics and management, this paper explores which key moments, events, and situations during the graduate student training process can effectively trigger and consolidate students' research interests. The study adopts a method combining multiple case studies and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to identify four key events: "institutional opportunities", "relationship embedding", "curricular collision", and "practical refinement". A three-dimensional explanatory framework of "individual readiness - event impact - environmental support" is constructed. Qualitative and configurational analysis jointly reveal that the formation of high research interests follows the logic of "multiple concurrent" and "different paths leading to the same destination", and there are three core paths - "institutional empowerment breakthrough", "mentorship cultivation growth", and "practical feedback epiphany". This study deepens the understanding of the dynamic formation process of research interests and provides theoretical basis and practical implications for universities to optimize the training model of top-notch innovative talents through precise design and intervention of key events.

KEYWORDS

Key event analysis; Research interest; Top-notch innovative talents; Graduate students in economics and management; Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis

CITE THIS PAPER

GuangHui Hou. How do key events inspire an interest in scientific research: qualitative case and configuration path analysis of top innovative talent cultivation in economics and management. Educational Research and Human Development. 2025, 2(3): 1-7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.61784/erhd3045.

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