The Construction and Practice of Using a Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation System for Project Maturity Based on the Sustainable Development of Entrepreneurship Among Chinese University Students

Abstract

There is a close connection between university student entrepreneurship programs and sustainable development, which are mutually reinforcing: university student entrepreneurship programs provide innovation and vitality for sustainable development, while concepts related to sustainable development can guide the development direction of university student entrepreneurship programs. College students are the driving force of innovation and entrepreneurship. In view of the problems of the failure rate of college students’ entrepreneurial projects, this article constructs a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model based on the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. Then, this study uses the hierarchical analysis method to clarify the comprehensive evaluation indexes affecting the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurial projects and takes a student entrepreneurial project of Qingdao University of Technology as an example. Ultimately, specific suggestions are offered to optimize the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurial projects based on the evaluation results so as to improve the probability of success of college students’ entrepreneurship. Great importance is placed on the quality of university entrepreneurship projects and the sustainability of society in this study.

1. Introduction

At present, China’s economy has stepped into a new stage of growth, and the need for entrepreneurial talents across the country has become strikingly prominent [1]. At the same time, a fresh wave of technological and industrial revolution is rolling out globally. The policy backing China providing for college students’ entrepreneurship and the reforms in college entrepreneurship education have unlocked new prospects for the entrepreneurial journeys of these students [2]. In particular, in recent years, against the backdrop of China’s “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” drive, the accomplishments of entrepreneurship education in universities have made remarkable strides in both volume and caliber. College students’ entrepreneurial ventures are typically led by a young demographic with advanced education and are launched with a modest sum of start-up capital [3]. The core group of entrepreneurs is predominantly made up of undergraduates and junior college students, congregating in sectors such as agriculture, forestry, livestock, fisheries, wholesale and retail, and education and culture [4]. Close to 70% of these entrepreneurs launch with start-up funds under CNY 100,000. Over half of them experience swings in profit and loss, and 70% start to turn a profit within three years. A sizeable 54% of college entrepreneurs have entered entrepreneurship competitions [5], and 62% of emerging-tech entrepreneurs describe innovation and entrepreneurship platforms like start-up parks and incubators as supportive for their success in business [6]. In recent years, the number of Chinese college graduates has been rising. In 2022, there were 10.76 million graduates; in 2023, this figure climbed to 11.58 million; and by 2024, it reached 11.79 million [7]. However, the employment rate stands at a mere 55%. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurship rate among graduates has been growing annually. Specifically, 2.52% of college graduates, 1.41% of undergraduate graduates, and 0.54% of master’s degree graduates have chosen to start their own businesses [8]. This demonstrates that a significant portion of graduates have entered the entrepreneurial arena, reflecting a boost in their innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities. This trend is playing a crucial part in the steady progress toward achieving strategies like “innovation-driven development” and “Made in China 2035” [9], thus fueling economic and social development.

Sustainable development and university student entrepreneurship programs have a mutually reinforcing relationship. To start with, the innovative entrepreneurial undertakings of university students breathe fresh life into sustainable development. Armed with their active minds and cutting-edge knowledge, these student-led projects frequently incorporate emerging technologies, avant-garde business models, and eco-friendly concepts. Take, for instance, the exploration of green energy applications, the push for biodegradable materials, or the establishment of a sharing economy platform. College students’ entrepreneurial initiatives infuse innovative elements into the sustainable development of the economy, society, and environment alike, nudging traditional industries towards a greener and more efficient path.

Conversely, the very notion of sustainable development steers the course of college students’ entrepreneurship. In today’s context, where environmental consciousness is on the rise and resources are increasingly constrained, entrepreneurial projects that adhere to sustainable development principles hold greater potential and have a competitive edge. For example, ventures centered around the utilization of renewable resources, ecological agriculture, or cultural heritage preservation and innovation not only sync with the zeitgeist but also stand a better chance of garnering policy support and social acceptance. This, in turn, paves the way for the long term and stable growth of projects and, simultaneously, expedites the attainment of sustainable goals such as resource conservation, environmental protection, and social equity.

In recent years, college students’ entrepreneurship has received robust backing from national policies. However, challenges are still faced in sustaining entrepreneurial endeavors [9], which threaten the long-term viability and sustainability of entrepreneurial programs. The following are key areas of concern:

• Innovative ability: Technological innovation is an important factor for entrepreneurial success, and some college students may be underperforming in this area [10].
• Funding problems: In the overall entrepreneurial environment, there are a considerable number of entrepreneurial projects led by college students, but their quality is mixed, and a certain proportion of entrepreneurial projects face problems such as disconnecting from the market in the early stage or breaking the capital chain in a later stage.
• Knowledge and experience limitations: Entrepreneurship practice can help college students to realize their value, but if college students have insufficient experience in social practices, lack of knowledge of the market, or a lack of systematic scientific guidance, entrepreneurial failure rate is higher [11].

Therefore, there is an urgent need to evaluate the maturity of university entrepreneurship programs and establish a set of evaluation index systems to measure their sustainability.

Macro-level:

• Analyzing the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurial projects is crucial as it aligns with the national economic supply-side structural reform. By doing so, we aim to enhance the quality and boost the efficiency within this domain. This entails achieving an optimal distribution of resources, minimizing any impediments to create as pure an entrepreneurial environment for college students as possible. The overarching goal is to fuel the sustainable and healthy progression of college students’ entrepreneurship and foster the establishment of a robust ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship [12].
• At the same time, it is also conducive to a clearer direction for the reform and transformation of dual-creation education in Chinese universities, which will be more informative for the formulation of relevant national policies [13].

Micro-level:

• Evaluating the maturity of a project demands a systematic examination of the projects under assessment. By doing this, we can derive evaluation outcomes that offer both scientific and theoretical direction for the project. Such guidance is instrumental in paving the way for its continued, steady and sound advancement.
• It can provide specific program guidance for college students to judge the maturity of the project, help college students better choose the more feasible entrepreneurial program, and then combine with their own strengths, anchored in the higher maturity of the project to carry out the entrepreneurial practice.

Nowadays, the comprehensive evaluation of college students’ entrepreneurship initiatives chiefly focuses on several key aspects, namely sustainability, viability, project quality, program diversity, and the assessment of large-scale programs [14]. The research methods employed span a wide range. They include the AHP-BP neural network method [15], the hierarchical analysis technique based on the “three-circle theory” (AHP) [16], the fuzzy hierarchical analysis process (FAHP) [17], the improved TOPSIS approach [18], process evaluation, the questionnaire-based method, the fuzzy synthesis assessment protocol, and the Delphi technique [19]. These are used to assign weights to indicators at different levels. The evaluation zeroes in on elements such as the entrepreneurial environment, managerial capabilities, technical scrutiny, social considerations, and project appraisal. Essentially, it revolves around exploring the entrepreneurial context, managerial competence, technical analysis, social support, and other related aspects, along with conducting a weighted analysis of various elements. For instance, scholars’ empirical findings of scholars in their in-depth analysis of the college students’ entrepreneurial project feasibility evaluation index system, which is based on the fuzzy hierarchical analysis method, reveal that: entrepreneurial traits, entrepreneurial capabilities, policy conditions, and the degree of alignment are the crucial factors influencing the feasibility of entrepreneurial projects.

International research on the evaluation of the maturity of entrepreneurial programs for college students began in the 1990s, and relevant scholars have expressed the importance and complexity of establishing evaluation models. Patrick Bet-David, author of Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy, shares his experience from non-college students to successful entrepreneurs, and provides college students with guidance on entrepreneurial strategic planning to help them assess the maturity of their startups and the direction of their projects from a business strategy perspective [20]. CJ Cornell, author of The Age of Metapreneurship, discusses the fast-changing entrepreneurial landscape and introduces new types of entrepreneurship driven by new technologies and market factors, so as to enable university students to understand the new trends in entrepreneurship and the competencies they need to judge the maturity and adaptability of their projects in the current environment [21]. Santalova, M.S. [22] argued that in the current environment of uncertainty, innovative entrepreneurial programs should be considered to be a complex system. Its evaluation requires consideration of a large number of internal and external, quantitative and qualitative factors, and should be carried out by experts as an informal procedure. Expert models used to evaluate innovative entrepreneurship programs enable us to identify their strengths and weaknesses, while expert models are quite objective and help to select the most effective programs to guide the development of the new innovative economy. Fisher, R. [23] explored the concept of entrepreneurial success through a qualitative study with ten entrepreneurs. This investigative process developed nine indicators and conducted exploratory and validation factor analyses with 213 entrepreneurs and found that entrepreneurs perceived entrepreneurial success as the presence of individual and macro-level variables. This study supports the theory that entrepreneurial success is a multidimensional construct best captured through financial and economic indicators.

Further, in the international studies of this domain, the evaluation indexes span a wide gamut, ranging from the subjective facets related to entrepreneurial teams to the objective elements of the surrounding environment. For instance, Stuart, R.W. [24] undertook a quantitative assessment of how experience factors relatively impact the early-stage performance of entrepreneurs. This considered multiple aspects including the business environment, strategic approaches, organizational types, the personalities and attitudes of entrepreneurs, as well as the diverse experiences of both the entrepreneurs themselves and team members. Yanrong, W. [25], bearing in mind the unique characteristics of high-tech entrepreneurial enterprises, devised a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model to gauge competitiveness. By employing the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation technique, a competitiveness evaluation index system was constructed. This system incorporated six categories of indexes, namely R&D capabilities, entrepreneurial acumen, financing prowess, marketing skills, profitability, and growth potential. Subsequently, the model was used to evaluate its level of sample enterprises, furnishing a scientific foundation for high-tech entrepreneurial enterprises. This enables them to conduct a quantitative appraisal of their competitiveness and formulate astute competitive strategies.

The investigations previously mentioned have provided crucial theoretical backing for devising a fitting evaluation system model for college students’ entrepreneurial projects. But here is the catch: research centered around gauging the maturity of these projects is still scarce. What is even scarcer are studies that take the project maturity evaluation model and apply it to successful college start-ups, then dig into specific cases to analyze the outcomes [26]. The root of the problem, especially in China, is that most of these studies focus narrowly on assessing projects tied to the College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program. Just a smattering of them attempt to build an evaluation system for entrepreneurial projects on a broader, macro scale. And even then, they usually stop short of delving deeper into real-world examples to prove the system actually works and is useful in practice.

2. Research Methodology

2.1. Research Methods and Tools

The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is able to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the factors related to the evaluated project, thus integrating an evaluation index to objectively assess relevant issues. In recent years, it has been widely used in engineering projects, education, economic management, and other aspects [27]. The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is based on determining the evaluation factors and their corresponding weights, describing the evaluation factors and their corresponding fuzzy boundaries in terms of affiliation, and constructing a fuzzy evaluation matrix by applying the principle of fuzzy change to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the evaluated object; when there are many factors to be taken into consideration in the evaluation problem and when it is complicated, the hierarchical method is usually adopted to deal with evaluations problem, applying multilayer composite operation, and ultimately to ascertain which level the evaluation object belongs to.

2.2. Research Evaluation System Design

2.2.1. Establishment of an Evaluation Indicator System

Since the evaluation of college students’ entrepreneurial maturity is a grand systematic project that has many evaluation indicators describing the status of the project and a relatively complicated evaluation process, in order to make the evaluation results scientific, effective, comprehensive, and reliable, the selected indicators should be not only broad, covering all aspects of the project under study, but also representative, fully demonstrating various types of factors that are closely related to the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurship. Therefore, when designing the evaluation index system, the following principles should be followed: the goal-oriented principle, the scientific principle, the systematic principle, and the operability principle. In order to sort out the factors for evaluating the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurial projects, the authors interviewed innovation and entrepreneurship instructors, school-running teachers, counselors, entrepreneurial students, and outstanding entrepreneurs on the basis of the literature research and the characteristics of college students’ projects. Finally, five primary indicators and 17 secondary indicators (see

Table 1. Evaluation index system of college students’ entrepreneurial program maturity.

Resource ownership (U1)	Social resource ownership (u1)
	Financial resource ownership (u2)
	Human resource ownership (u3)
Project funding (U2)	Structural funding (u4)
	Human resources (u5)
	social funding (u6)
Market situation (U3)	Market potential of the project (u7)
	Barriers to market entry (u8)
	Potential entry projects (u9)
	Project uniqueness (u10)
Technical content (U4)	Technical uniqueness (u11)
	Technical reliability (u12)
	technological superiority (u13)
Project environment (U5)	Internal R&D environment (u14)
	External policy environment (u15)
	Legal security environment (u16)
	After-sales service environment (u17)

for details) of resource ownership, project funding, technology content, and project environment were identified as the main indicators of the evaluation system of college students’ entrepreneurship projects.

• Resource Ownership: Entrepreneurial resources are the prerequisite for entrepreneurs to carry out entrepreneurial activities smoothly [28]. Compared with the general entrepreneurs in society, college student entrepreneurs have access to own more entrepreneurial resources, such as government resources, college resources, enterprise resources, and other diverse sources, and the benefits that are typically available basically cover all college students entrepreneurs, while the differences in maturity in the later stage of the program are mainly in the three aspects of social resources, financial resources, and human resources. The social resources here mainly refer to the help platform of the external society and the social relations affecting the entrepreneurial activities, i.e., whether the project can get help from the outside in time to get through the bottleneck period when facing difficulties. Financial resources mainly refer to all kinds of monetary and financial support available to the entrepreneurial program, such as investments, loans, and industrial support funds, which are essential in the process of business operation. Human resources mainly refer to the partners who support, assist, and guarantee the smooth progress of the entrepreneurial project. Generally speaking, an excellent partner should have keen market observation, firm entrepreneurial beliefs, and a wide range of personal connections.
• Project funding: The problem of insufficient funds for entrepreneurial projects has always been a huge problem for college students’ entrepreneurship, which is crucial to the chances of success of entrepreneurial projects and their subsequent development [29]. So far, although the solution to the problem of entrepreneurial capital has made some progress in government support, it is more important for the sustainable development of entrepreneurial projects to have a perfect capital chain and a rigorous human organization and management system. Project funds include structural, human, and social funds. It is widely acknowledged that, if modern enterprises want to realize effective operation, they must have a complete human management system, that is, structural funds. The so-called human capital refers to the fact that in the whole entrepreneurial team, each person can give full play to his or her own strengths, some are responsible for research and development, research and development, sales, production, specialists, and each doing his or her own job, division of labor and collaboration, and maximize the advantages of the whole team’s synergy. Social capital refers to the social network to obtain the project-related enterprises to reach a full partnership in order to realize the development and growth of their own projects.
• Market situation: Mature entrepreneurial projects not only need to have a clear market positioning but also need to objectively predict the future market. When entrepreneurs choose a business project, they first need to analyze the market potential of the project to fill the market gaps in the industry as the goal; then analyze the project in the process of entering the market will encounter obstacles, and try to crack the development of the problem; finally, they need to research and consider whether there is potential for the same project with strong competitiveness in the market, in order to make clear that the project’s uniqueness.
• Technical content: The technological content of the entrepreneurial program is also one of the important measures of the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurial programs. The technological content of the project includes three aspects: technological advancement, technological reliability, and technological uniqueness. First of all, the market competitiveness of the entrepreneurial project is closely related to whether the project is technologically advanced or not, and the products of the project with high technological content and advanced technology can highlight the unique advantages, which are the key factors for entrepreneurs to obtain profits. Secondly, the entrepreneurial project must be technical to ensure reliability and avoid choosing an entrepreneurial project that is not mature enough and difficult to land, so as not to cause irreparable losses. Finally, the entrepreneurial project technology needs to be unique to ensure irreplaceability, it is advisable to apply for a patent in advance for legal protection. Otherwise, if the core technology of the project is in a short period of time for other enterprises to crack and emulate, then the risk level of failure of the project will be greatly increased.
• Project environment: At present, the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurship and innovation projects is affected by various environmental factors, leading to varying levels of development, and the social environment factors directly affect the overall development of the project. The project environment can be roughly divided into four aspects: internal research and development environment, external policy environment, after-sales support framework, and legal service environment. The internal R&D environment of the entrepreneurial project mainly refers to whether the product has perfect production conditions and mature technology in the process of production, and whether the industry to which the project belongs can form a trend of continuous expansion. The external policy environment mainly refers to the school, the government and even the whole society’s helping policies and support for college students’ entrepreneurship. The after-sale guarantee environment not only emphasizes the solution of service guarantee problems after the end of project product sales but also highlights the influence of after-sale products and the statistics of customer repurchase rate. The legal service infrastructure refers to the laws and regulations that should be complied with when the project conducts economic trade with the external market.

2.2.2. Determine the Set of Influencing Factors and Their Weights

Based on the design of the five indicator systems described above, the set of factors are U, U = {u₁, u₂, …, u₁₇}. The set of factors can be categorized into five subsets by their attributes. U₁ = {u₁, u₂, u₃}, U₂ = {u₄, u₅, u₆}, U₃ = {u₇, u₈, u_9, u₁₀}, U₄ = {u₁₁, u₁₂, u₁₃}, U₅ = {u₁₄, u₁₅, u_16, u₁₇}. The corresponding one-factor judgment matrix for this five-item subset is R1, R2, R3, R4, and R5. The corresponding set of weights is A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5, and Theande’s corresponding indicator layer is A.

According to the importance of various factors in each subset on the impact of entrepreneurial project maturity, the analytic hierarchy process is used to give each factor the corresponding weight coefficient, so as to form a weight set of factors for evaluating the maturity of the project. Based on this approach and in combination with relevant literature, the comprehensive judgment matrix of each indicator is constructed, and then the consistency test of the matrix is carried out. The consistency test is performed by calculating the maximum characteristic root λ_max of the judgement matrix, the consistency index CI and the consistency ratio CR: If CR < 0.1,it means that the degree of consistency of the judgement matrix A is within the permissible range, and then we can carry out the weight vector calculation using the eigenvectors; if CR ≥ 0.1,we need to consider the correction of the judgement matrix. Due to the complexity of the factors affecting the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurial projects, it is necessary to constantly carry out a comprehensive analysis of the various indicators, so as to determine the specific weights of the various indicators. The calculation results of the hierarchical analysis of the first-level indicators are shown in

Table 2. First-level criteria hierarchy analytic process (AHP) judgment matrix.

A Level of Primary Indicators	U1	U2	U3	U4	U5	Weighting
U1	1	3	2	4	3	0.40
U2	1/3	1	1/2	2	1	0.14
U3	1/2	2	1	3	2	0.24
U4	1/4	1/2	1/3	1	1/2	0.08
U5	1/3	1	1/2	2	1	0.14

λ_max = 5.033, CI = 0.008, and CR = 0.007 < 0.1.

:

After establishing the weights of the first-level indicators, the judgment matrix of each indicator is constructed again and the consistency test is carried out, so that the weight set of the second-level indicators as shown in

Table 3. Hierarchy of factors.

Goal	First Layer	Weighting	Second Layer	Weighting
Status of entrepreneurial projects (U)	Resource ownership (U1)	0.40	Social resource ownership (u1)	0.58
			Financial resource ownership (u2)	0.31
			Human resource ownership (u3)	0.11
	Project funding (U2)	0.14	Structural funding (u4)	0.63
			Human resources (u5)	0.11
			Social funding (u6)	0.26
	Market situation (U3)	0.24	Market potential of the project (u7)	0.57
			Barriers to market entry (u8)	0.07
			Potential entry projects (u9)	0.11
			Project uniqueness (u10)	0.25
	Technical content (U4)	0.08	Technical uniqueness (u11)	0.27
			Technical reliability (u12)	0.61
			technological superiority (u13)	0.12
	Project environment (U5)	0.14	Internal R&D environment (u14)	0.57
			External policy environment (u15)	0.06
			Legal security environment (u16)	0.14
			After-sales service environment (u17)	0.23

can be obtained:

From the above table, the following is derived:

$$A=\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}0.40& 0.14& 0.24& 0.08& 0.14\end{array}\right)$$

$$A_1=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0.58& 0.31& 0.11\end{array}\right)$$

$$A_2=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0.63& 0.11& 0.26\end{array}\right)$$

$$A_3=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0.57& 0.07& 0.11& 0.25\end{array}\right)$$

$$A_4=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0.27& 0.61& 0.12\end{array}\right)$$

Summarizing the results of the above analysis, it is possible to classify the fuzzy evaluation level of entrepreneurial maturity into four classes: v₁ = excellent, v₂ = good, v₃ = moderate, v₄ = poor, and so there are V = {v₁, v₂, v₃, v₄}.

2.3. Objects of This Study and Evaluation

The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method approach is applied to conduct a maturity analysis with Qingdao Kerun Time Advanced Lubrication Technology Co., Ltd. (Qingdao, China) founded by Jing Zhaogang, a doctoral student at the School of Mechanical Engineering of Qingdao University of Technology. The company is mainly engaged in lubrication measurement experimental platform, registered on 27 May 2019, in Huangdao District, Qingdao City. The company is mainly engaged in the design, installation, and sales of experimental measurement instruments, computer hardware, and software development and sales, as well as the provision of sample testing for the third party; the sales market is mainly oriented to the country’s major institutions of higher learning, scientific research institutes, as well as lubricants and greases production enterprises, etc. The company now has 15 employees, 5 PhDs and 10 masters, with solid background knowledge in the field, and the relevant research direction involves tribology, chemical machinery, business administration, international economics and trade, materials science, and other diversified fields. The company’s entrepreneurial projects aim to analyze the lubrication failure mechanism in a targeted manner, promote the development of the lubrication industry, improve the efficiency of lubrication enterprises, promote employment in the form of innovation and entrepreneurship, and encourage more college students to dare to start their own business. On the other hand, the company is willing to take on social responsibility, promote the development of micro–nano tribology in China, solve the shortcomings of lubrication technology for high-end components, promote technological development in the lubrication field, and contribute to enhancing national competitiveness.

The company is currently in a high-speed development stage, with its business spanning over 100 cities nationwide. Multiple mass media have focused on reporting it and it has received widespread attention and full recognition from all sectors of society. There are two reasons for taking this project as an example for maturity analysis: first, the evaluation of entrepreneurial maturity of science and engineering college students is a comprehensive evaluation involving multiple levels and indicators, and this entrepreneurial project is very typical and representative because it involves all the indicators of fuzzy evaluation. secondly, relying on the example analysis of Qingdao Kerun Time Advanced Lubrication Technology Co., Ltd. which has been successfully operated for 3 years, can fully prove the effectiveness of the comprehensive fuzzy evaluation index system listed in this study. In the future, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model can be constructed and promoted by combining the maturity characteristics of college student entrepreneurship projects and relevant assumptions of the model.

2.4. Research Participants

In order to ensure the objectivity of the evaluation, the author took the entrepreneurial project of Qingdao KeRun Time Advanced Lubrication Technology Co., Ltd. as the object of evaluation. The author randomly invited 100 entrepreneurs from Qingdao University of Technology’s college students’ entrepreneurial incubation base to form an entrepreneurial project evaluation team, and evaluated factors in the second-level indicators of the project from diverse perspectives.

2.5. Ethical Consideration

All procedures performed in this study were ethical, and all participants gave informed consent. Participants’ participation in this study was voluntary and they did not receive any rewards. Participants in the evaluation were asked to fill out an evaluation questionnaire and they could withdraw from this study at any time. Moreover, confidentiality and anonymity in the questionnaire process were guaranteed. This study was also approved by the department related to innovation and entrepreneurship at Qingdao University of Technology.

3. Results

Taking the internal R&D environment in the evaluation index of this entrepreneurial program as an example, 22 entrepreneurs chose “Excellent”, 26 chose “Good”, 36 chose “Average”, and 16 entrepreneurs chose “Inferior” to describe the internal R&D environment, so the evaluation of u14 is (0.22, 0.26, 0.36, and 0.16). Therefore, the evaluation of the external policy environment, the after-sales service environment, and the legal protection environment can be expressed by the matrix as follows:

$$R_5=\left(\begin{array}{l}0.22 0.26 0.36 0.16\\ 0.26 0.32 0.18 0.24\\ 0.28 0.26 0.16 0.30\\ 0.30 0.28 0.22 0.20\end{array}\right)$$

Similarly, other one-factor evaluation matrices can be derived separately:

$$R_1=\left(\begin{array}{l}0.36 0.24 0.13 0.27\\ 0.20 0.32 0.25 0.23\\ 0.40 0.22 0.26 0.12\end{array}\right)$$

$$R_2=\left(\begin{array}{l}0.33 0.28 0.26 0.13\\ 0.22 0.35 0.25 0.18\\ 0.19 0.27 0.33 0.21\end{array}\right)$$

$$R_3=\left(\begin{array}{l}0.24 0.36 0.18 0.22\\ 0.32 0.26 0.24 0.18\\ 0.34 0.16 0.22 0.28\\ 0.25 0.32 0.27 0.16\end{array}\right)$$

$$R_4=\left(\begin{array}{l}0.22 0.19 0.33 0.26\\ 0.35 0.23 0.25 0.17\\ 0.16 0.36 0.25 0.23\end{array}\right)$$

Fuzzy comprehensive assessment:

$$B_1=A_1•R_1=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0.36& 0.31& 0.25& 0.27\end{array}\right)$$

$$B_2=A_2•R_2=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0.33& 0.28& 0.26& 0.21\end{array}\right)$$

$$B_3=A_3•R_3=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0.25& 0.36& 0.25& 0.22\end{array}\right)$$

$$B_4=A_4•R_4=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0.35& 0.23& 0.27& 0.26\end{array}\right)$$

$$B_5=A_5•R_5=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0.23& 0.26& 0.36& 0.20\end{array}\right)$$

Because ${\displaystyle \sum _{k=1}^5{b}_{ik}\ne 1}$, the first level judgment vector B is normalized to obtain R, calculate B = A·R, and after normalization, obtain B’ = (0.29 0.25 0.23 0.23). The parameters of each level in the evaluation set V = {v₁, v₂, v₃, v₄} are quantized so that the final rating of the entrepreneurial program can be obtained as:

$$Y=B^{\prime }\times {[4 3 2 1]}^T=2.67$$

At the same time, the authors assessed the stage of development and stability of the project by referring to the quantitative data indicators of this university entrepreneurship program, as detailed in

Table 4. Quantitative indicators related to entrepreneurship programs.

Market Side	Market share	3.5%
	Market growth rate	6.7%
Product or Service	Product completeness	45.9%
	Product quality conformity rate	88.5%
financial position	Profitability	8%
	Funding turnover rate	2 times
operations management (OM)	Customer satisfaction	95%
	Employee turnover rate	12%

.

As a result, Qingdao Kerun Time Advanced Lubrication Technology Co., Ltd. scored 2.67 points in the comprehensive evaluation and was assessed according to the evaluation level specified in

Table 5. Classification of levels of comprehensive evaluation of entrepreneurship programs.

Rank	Excellent	Good	Average	Inferior
mark	4~3	3~2	2~1	1~0

. The maturity level of the project is “Good”.

4. Discussion and Recommendations

4.1. Discussion of Example Results

Scoring results of the first-tier evaluation indicators show that the evaluation team assigned higher ratings to aspects like resource ownership, project funding, market conditions, and the project environment than they did to the project’s technical content. Regarding the project’s technical aspects at the second-level indicators, the evaluation team gave the highest marks to technical reliability, while the evaluation for the uniqueness of the technology was rather low. The data indicate that, at its inception, the company was well prepared. However, during its business operations, it faced risks associated with technological iteration. For instance, it struggled to introduce innovative technological achievements in a timely manner and ran the risk of being replicated by similar competitors who could then snatch away market share. Essentially, the company has hit an innovation “bottleneck”.

Qingdao Kerun Time Advanced Lubrication Technology Co., Ltd. has been operating for seven years, with its main focus on developing information service systems. The company has been dedicated to nurturing its talent pool, continuously recruiting highly educated and skilled college students, which has gradually enhanced its overall core competitiveness and economic performance. Nevertheless, due to the current market dynamics, several challenges have emerged. Its core technology is easily imitated as the internal technology protection and intellectual property rights protection mechanisms are not robust. There is also a lack of healthy competition among enterprises of the same kind; instead, a cutthroat competition prevails, with companies scrambling aggressively for technology and talent. Moreover, the company suffers from a shortage of project support funds and an overall lack of sustained innovation capabilities, all of which have to some extent dampened its market development prospects.

By conducting a comprehensive analysis of the operational status of Qingdao Kerun Time Advanced Lubrication Technology Co., Ltd., it can be inferred that the aforementioned fuzzy comprehensive evaluation results are substantially aligned with the actual operational scenario. This implies that the evaluation of the maturity of college student entrepreneurship projects using the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is fairly accurate.

To test the applicability of this model, the researchers conducted an in-depth exploration into the maturity level of a major state-owned enterprise in China, Tsingtao Brewery Company Limited. They enlisted the expertise of specialists to provide scores and evaluations. The final result came out to 3.2, which was highly consistent with the actual operational scenario. This suggests that the model holds a certain degree of applicability when it comes to large corporations.

4.2. Practice Inspiration

As Mestafelbim aptly put it, “The most crucial objective of evaluation is not to validate, but to enhance”. Based on the verification provided by the aforementioned examples, with the aim of further fueling on college students’ entrepreneurial endeavors, the process management theory is brought into play. The fundamental tenet of this theory is to place the enterprise’s operational processes at the heart of things. It entails redesigning the internal organizational structure, operational methods, and codes of conduct within the enterprise. Essentially, it is about “reimagining and reengineering the enterprise’s processes to effect improvements in performance metrics such as cost, quality, service, and speed”, departing from the traditional division of labor principle. This theory has captured the attention of management scholars and the business community alike, and companies across the globe have, as if by some unspoken agreement, incorporated Hammer’s management concepts into their own management practices and organizational designs. By leveraging this theory, efforts are made to optimize the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurial projects, and certain developmental insights are proposed.

Firstly, higher education undertakes the crucial mission of nurturing entrepreneurial talent. It falls upon colleges and universities to focus on enhancing the quality of entrepreneurship education and fostering a new generation of entrepreneurs. From the perspective of the synergistic development between innovation and entrepreneurship education and the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurial pursuits, and underpinned by the process management theory, institutions of higher learning ought to meticulously plan the preliminary stage of the process management for innovation and entrepreneurship education. This entails carefully curating and training educators in this domain, closely overseeing the implementation of relevant programs, and instituting a feedback and application loop for the later phases of management. To rectify any misalignments in the management of innovation and entrepreneurship education processes on campus, a four-step approach is proposed. Central to this are the creation of tailored entrepreneurship education courses tailored to students with an entrepreneurial bent, arming them with an in-depth understanding of relevant policies and honing their practical skills. Universities should also offer methodological guidance to help students make wise choices when it comes to picking their entrepreneurial projects, enabling them to leverage their innovative strengths, seize emerging market opportunities, rise to the challenges of competition, and mitigate the risks of failure.

Secondly, at the social and governmental levels, from a social perspective regarding process reengineering, the focus is on college student entrepreneurs. It centers around the process, uses the “service chain” as a connecting thread, and aims for a flat organizational model to reshape the management process of college students’ entrepreneurial endeavors. Moreover, the government has a key role to play. It should enhance the legal framework for entrepreneurship and intensify legal awareness campaigns to protect the legitimate rights and interests of start-ups. When it comes to project selection, it needs to identify and promote those that can showcase core strengths. Expanding funding avenues is crucial too; for instance, setting up entrepreneurial mutual aid funds. All these efforts culminate in constructing a multifaceted social support system for entrepreneurship. Enterprises also have a part to play their roles. They should enthusiastically embrace the “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” policy and cooperate with universities to formulate an “industry-university-research” platform. Together, they can formulate hierarchical talent training goals, adhering to the novel training paradigm of “theoretical learning on campus and practical application in enterprises”. By following this new cultivation mechanism, the objective is to accelerate the transformation of innovative theories into entrepreneurial actions and cultivate outstanding entrepreneurial talents who are better responsive to market demands.

College students’ entrepreneurship is fraught with variables, and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation addresses this uncertainty and quantifies fuzzy information. In entrepreneurial management, entrepreneurs are invariably confronted with market demand and potential competition that are difficult to accurately predict, they must incorporate them into their considerations using scientific methods. For instance, predicting the market acceptance of a new consumer product, qualitative information from multiple sources can be collected and fuzzy processed to aid decision making. Entrepreneurs should periodically reevaluate the maturity of the project and adjust management strategies based on stage changes. For example, the maturity of technology research and development is critical at the early stage, and the weight of market and finance rises in the middle and late stages, so that manpower and capital can be deployed accordingly to promote the project to maturity in a flexible and adaptive manner.

Simultaneously, for student entrepreneurs to effectively promote innovation and avoid market imitation their foremost task is to explore their own interests and specializations. Computer science students, for example, can leverage their deep understanding of their field of expertise to focus on the development of an emerging algorithm for a specific application. For instance, in the field of medical image processing, deep learning algorithms are used to improve the accuracy and efficiency of disease diagnosis, and in this way, they can enter the market from their own unique knowledge perspective and lay the foundation for innovation. At the same time, building a team with a multicultural background is also a very critical strategy. There are significant differences in the mindsets, values and problem-solving styles of members from different cultures. Such difference is like the collision of different elements, which can often stimulate unprecedented novelty and creativity. Team members may come from different regions and have different disciplinary backgrounds, and in the face of product design, marketing and other issues, their unique insights into each other, thus bringing new ideas and directions for the enterprise, greatly enhancing the possibility of innovation and richness.

One more point in particular, the entrepreneurial community of university students should respond positively and integrate into the country’s sustainable development and upgrading strategies to ensure that the education system aligns with the country’s long-term planning. To this end, it is imperative to innovate the content of education, with the aim of accurately responding to the ever-changing needs of the market, and to cultivate versatile human resources with a forward-looking vision and practical ability. At the same time, strengthening the construction of teachers is a core aspect to improve the quality of education, we need to continue to introduce and cultivate high-level educational talents, through continuous professional development training, to improve the overall quality and innovation ability of the teaching force. For the important field of innovation and entrepreneurship education in colleges and universities, we should deeply study and adopt the latest research results and practical experience. At the same time, integrating and analyzing up-to-date information, especially the latest research findings on the design, performance assessment and enhancement path of the evaluation system of innovation and entrepreneurship education in colleges and universities, is crucial to constructing an evaluation system that is both scientific and forward-looking. These cutting-edge insights and methods can not only help us accurately measure the effectiveness of innovation and entrepreneurship education, but also provide targeted strategic recommendations for universities to promote the sustainable development of innovation and entrepreneurship education at the theoretical and practical levels, and contribute to the national innovation-driven development strategy.

5. Research Significance

In this study, we employed the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, which has gained broad acceptance across numerous fields in recent times. Multiple maturity evaluation indices for college students’ entrepreneurial projects have been identified by referring to relevant literature. Subsequently, we utilized the analytic hierarchy process to ascertain the appropriate weights for these evaluation factors. After gathering pertinent evaluation data from 100 assessors, we constructed a fuzzy evaluation matrix to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the evaluation target.

Theoretically, to begin with, this study augments the theoretical framework for entrepreneurship evaluation. The application of the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation approach offers a novel theoretical perspective when it comes to gauging the maturity of college students’ entrepreneurial projects. Conventional evaluation techniques often hinge too heavily on precise figures and well-defined boundaries. In contrast, the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation methodology factors in the elements of uncertainty and ambiguity that are inherent in entrepreneurial ventures. Secondly, this evaluation methodology amalgamates knowledge from multiple disciplines such as management, mathematics, and economics. From a management science perspective, it helps in dissecting and organizing the components of each stage in the management of entrepreneurial projects. In the realm of mathematics, the fuzzy mathematical theory equips us with a means to quantify nebulous concepts, thereby making it feasible to quantitatively analyze the intricate and uncertain scenarios that entrepreneurial projects present. Meanwhile, the principles of economics come into play when considering economic aspects like the market environment and cost–benefit analysis. This promotes a cross-pollination of theories from diverse fields within the entrepreneurship domain. Finally, it enriches college students’ understanding of entrepreneurial project maturity. It enables a more profound realization that the maturity of an entrepreneurial project is, in fact, a holistic and multidimensional construct. By leveraging the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, we can unearth the fuzzy interconnections among these subsystems and how their combined effect shapes the overall maturity.

Maturity evaluation enables college entrepreneurs to clearly identify the strengths and weaknesses of the project in various key dimensions, such as market analysis, product development, and teamwork, and helps entrepreneurs to determine whether to proceed with the project, adjust the direction of the project, or pause the project. Maturity evaluation offers a quantitative and more objective assessment of the project, enabling investors to more accurately judge the potential risks and returns of the project. Schools and governments can accurately formulate and adjust entrepreneurial support policies based on the overall maturity of college students’ entrepreneurial projects. Colleges and universities can use the results of the evaluation of entrepreneurial project maturity in the teaching process, optimize the entrepreneurship education curriculum system, and make entrepreneurship education more in line with the actual needs of entrepreneurship.

6. Research Limitations and Future Prospects

This study was constrained by a number of factors in moving forward, creating many limitations and affecting the final results.

The small sample size, subjectivity inherent in qualitative research and self-reporting bias of quantitative research challenged the generalizability, reliability and precision of the results in terms of sample and research methodology. For example, small samples failed to comprehensively represent of the research population, and investigator subjectivity and memory problems undermine data authenticity. In terms of company size and stage of development, only small companies with less than 20 employees were targeted, and their success metrics were simple and differed greatly from the complex indicators of large companies, making it impossible to generalize the conclusions. Moreover, the research object is in the early stage of entrepreneurship, which is different from the needs and environment of mature companies, so the current results are only applicable to a specific stage, and are invalid for evaluating large and mature companies, limiting the application of the results. The evaluation system focuses on objective conditions and ignores the subjective factors of university entrepreneurs and teams, which are crucial to entrepreneurship. For example, the lack of consideration of the potential of the project, such as the activity of innovative thinking, makes the results insufficiently complete and lacking further depth, which makes it difficult to effectively guide entrepreneurial practice.

In the future, after numerous trainings, this model can help more mature companies to process complex information. Large companies with diverse businesses and complex structures face many ambiguous situations, such as the uncertainty of market trends and the difficulty of accurately measuring the effectiveness of cross-departmental collaboration. Fuzzy comprehensive evaluation can integrate information from different departments and business lines, and integrating qualitative and quantitative indicators to comprehensively portray the overall state of the company. For example, assessing the maturity of new business expansion, when evaluating the fuzzy perception of market potential and quantitative data of input and output. In addition, under the guidance of this methodology, product innovation speed, talent turnover rate, cash flow health, etc., can be incorporated into the evaluation system of the maturity of corporate strategic transformation in accordance with the importance of empowerment, weighing the impact of each segment on the transformation process.

Operationally, this study offers great flexibility in setting indicators and weights, and different countries can adjust them according to their own economic, cultural and policy environments and the characteristics of local entrepreneurship programs. For example, in countries with a strong science and technology innovation atmosphere, the weight of technological innovation indicators will be increased; in countries with a strong emphasis on market trade, the focus will be on market channel development indicators. On the basis of the original study, we can explore the representative cases of college students’ entrepreneurship projects in other typical countries to further enrich and improve the evaluation system. Moreover, basic entrepreneurial elements like market demand and reasonable team composition are not culturally restricted, providing cross-cultural reference. However, the impact of cultural and policy differences cannot be ignored, and the evaluation system should not be copied as different policy support will make the maturity of the project different.

7. Conclusions

Given the high failure rate and other issues plaguing college students’ current entrepreneurial endeavors, we first use the analytic hierarchy process to ascertain the weights of the indicators. Subsequently, the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is employed to carry out a scientific calculation and objective assessment of the maturity of entrepreneurial projects. Taking a student entrepreneurial project from Qingdao University of Technology as an example, an empirical analysis is carried out. This verification attests to the relative soundness of the evaluation method. The results indicate that this approach can not only scientifically discern the significance of various indicators related to the maturity of entrepreneurial projects but also significantly enhance the precision of the evaluation. It assists entrepreneurs in objectively and accurately picking market-competitive entrepreneurial projects, thereby providing a useful reference for college students engaging in entrepreneurial practice. This model constitutes a relatively objective, practical, and scientific comprehensive evaluation model that holds certain promotional value. Additionally, it can be applied to evaluate, analyze, and appraise complex systems involving multiple factors, levels, and criteria, such as workers’ job performance and students’ quality assessment.