From Engineer to Entrepreneur
Engineers are extremely vital when it comes to bringing innovation into the world. Engineers have imagined, designed and built most of the world we live in. They have brought excellent advancements in different fields covering many diversities.
As an engineer, I believe that engineers help move the world forward. Despite our quirky and often nerdy reputation, engineers are visionaries, creative in their nature and builders at heart. We love to build, fix or improve just about anything. We place a great amount of trust in our calculations.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the commercialization of new innovation, one would think that an engineer would most likely be at the helm. Yes there are some great companies today that are led by engineers who now work as entrepreneurs, but not as many as you would think. In fact not too long ago a Duke and Harvard survey of over 500 technology companies, showed that only 37% of their leaders had engineering or computer science backgrounds. Since then several universities such as Harvard have introduced Entrepreneurship programs for Engineers.
The truth be told, that some of the very characteristics that make engineers so great as innovators can be some of our greatest drawbacks. Some of the obstacles that we engineers can face in becoming effective entrepreneurs is our approach to the following:
1) Customer Experience – It works great for me, it should work great for them. Making it a point to truly understand how our customer will interact with the product.
2) Sales and Selling – As engineers we can at times assume that if we build it they will buy it. This is cannot be any further from the truth. Sales is more than a phone call or a visit, it is a relationship.
3) Marketing – How difficult can it be to market a product. Marketing can be a very difficult skill that takes the perfect combination of art and strategy.
4) Communication – Knowing how to communicate the right things at the right time and the right way.
5) Collaboration – Building a perfect diverse team that is cohesive and effective is always a challenge. This is frankly is a big challenge for any company.
I have spent many years learning how to transition from an engineer’s mindset to understanding what it is to be a non-engineer, and “YES” relating to how the rest of the world thinks and views things. I will be honest and say that I had some rough time adapting but through corporate training programs and real life experiences, at the end it was well worth learning how to overcome these challenges.
In launching Headway Idea Labs, a Houston based tech incubator, it has always been our desire to help engineers and innovators successfully and quickly bridge that entrepreneurial gap. We understand the challenges faced when it comes to taking your concept or idea and transforming it into a disruptive product where its value, clearly and emotionally connects with the customer.
For more information visit www.headwayidealabs.com or email Wesley at [email protected]
At Headway Idea Labs We provide our proprietary 5 Step process in the development of Tech Startups or the re-launching of any company regardless of the age of the business.