At the beginning of my Junior year of college I decided to pick up a minor, both to diversify my engineering education with some business knowledge, and to fill my schedule as I finished up a couple more computer science courses (more-so the latter). In the very first entrepreneurship class they asked us what qualities and characteristics entrepreneurs possess that are unique from a non-entrepreneur. The class began spouting off adjectives such as “motivated” or “self-reliant.” While I do not dispute that these qualities may to a successful entrepreneur, I have come to view entrepreneurship in a new light. I even created a new term for it;
Business Engineering
After a quick google search I see this term has already been taken, but for the sake of this post, let’s pretend it’s a new concept.
Let me begin by defining the term “engineering” in my own words; the use of science to systematically advance society through the development and implementation of new technology. So how does this relate to entrepreneurship? It describes entrepreneurship almost perfectly;
Except a business is the product.
Engineers must make trade-offs when designing a product. Entrepreneurs must make trade-offs when determining a business model. Engineers build products to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and solve a pain. Entrepreneurs build organizations of people to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and solve a pain. An engineer may decide to switch out a circuit board to improve energy efficiency. An entrepreneur might decide to lay off an employee to increase gross profit. The parallels are endless. And while it is the case that products by engineers and products by entrepreneurs are fundamentally different, they are innately related;
Entrepreneurs build a product to sell a product.
The real product of an entrepreneur is a business model tailored to the actual product it aims to sell. And much like an engineer must go through a repetitious process of design, trial-and-error, and testing; the path to a viable business can only be achieved through the same processes.
The entrepreneur is its own breed of engineer.
andrewborba 