Is Engineering and Business A Natural Partnership?

Over the past few years, many schools, universities and other educational programs aimed at engineers have begun to shift the emphasis away from teaching exclusively technical skills, filling the gap with something which might initially seem slightly unexpected: business skills.

Although for many the instinct is to think that these two worlds are not supposed to be merged, the truth may be a little more complicated – after all, engineers are often the people who have the brightest ideas when it comes to innovating future products or services, and with knowledge about the business world they can become the entrepreneurs who advocate for their own products.

Engineering can be a Perfect Springboard into the Business World

So it turns out that far from being diametrically opposed, engineering and entrepreneurship can go hand in hand. In fact, a study completed back in 2012 found that of the CEOs and company founders they surveyed, advanced qualifications in engineering were three times as common as their business studies equivalents.

All this gives us pretty good grounding for a simple hypothesis: business skills come naturally to many of those who excel at engineering. This certainly isn’t an outlandish idea: many of the skills which help a person to thrive are the same in both worlds – attention to detail and creative problem solving being two of the most obvious areas of overlap.

Too Smart for Their Own Good?

Of course, nothing is ever quite that clear cut, and others have argued that engineers can be their own worst enemies when it comes to getting a product or service launched. Over at Forbes, Martin Zwilling eloquently points out that some of the things which make engineers great at what they do can become detrimental in a business environment – particularly the perfectionism which might mean that they’re never happy enough with the products to get it to market!

However, these are precisely the areas in which dedicated business studies classes tailored to engineers can help – so in the future we can expect to see even more technologically minded leaders rise through the ranks of the business community, as Bill Gates of Microsoft and Larry Page of Google have both been seen to do.

If you’re an engineer trying to branch out into your own business then you might find services such as our die casting process exceptionally useful for creating your new products. If so, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and find out more; we’re always happy to discuss the many ways in which we can assist those across a range of different industries. You can call us on 01614648333, connect with us online or head over to our Twitter page for regular industry updates.