As we gradually get to know each other, it makes sense to define a few things. This week is about “entrepreneurial engineers”

I help entrepreneurial engineers build confidence to tell their story and talk about their business, expertise, product, services and ideas in ways that connect with their audience.

Definitions

• Engineer: Noun, "a person whose job involves designing and building engines, machines, roads, bridges, etc."
• Entrepreneurial: Adj. "Having the spirit, attitude or qualities of an entrepreneur; enterprising."

TLDR;

Why this?

[1] I was there. I lived my version of both worlds (and still living it).

[2] I like seemingly opposite concepts. I always found value in the overlap.

My version of "entrepreneurial engineers."

[3] Engineers are wired to reduce or eliminate risk. Being entrepreneurial, they take on more risk than other peers. It can be scary. Courage, unlike bravery, is doing something while you are afraid. I would argue that engineers need a lot more courage to make certain decisions in business. I have deep respect for courageous people who leap in faith for a more fulfilling life. If they fail, everyone will say, "we told you so", and if they succeed "you got lucky". Not cool 😄

[4] There are exciting and challenging problems to solve: connecting with people, psychology, when to go counter-intuitive, what value creation is, what one's value is and more.

Extended version for the courageous ones reading up to here 🙂

At first, this looks like an oxymoron or a paradox. But I lived regularly in two seemingly opposing worlds, Morocco / France, France / Germany, Germany / Bulgaria, Engineering / Marketing, Employee / Independent, Independent / Entrepreneur…

What I learned is to ask myself the question: are these concepts opposite? Mutually exclusive? Complementary? Overlapping?

While I find no fun exploring the obvious first two. I truly enjoy exploring seemingly opposite concepts' "complementary" and "overlapping" aspects.

Creation happens in the tension between such opposites, man & woman, day & night, hot & cold, + & -, ups & downs. Each is a world in itself; when both play together, magic happens.

Complementarity

Entrepreneurial Engineers lead a few internal battles as in the picture below on accuracy & precision.

"I would rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong."

-Warren Buffet once quoted the economist John Maynard Keynes

Ideally, the flow in business and career needs to go like this :

• Loose Starts : [A] At the beginning of the company or the idea, we need to make a lot of errors; it's a necessarily wasteful process to find the right direction. It has low accuracy and low precision.
• As we gain knowledge and speed and build momentum [B], we need to get to higher and higher accuracy; precision can still be low.
• When we get momentum and need to remove any friction [C] and reduce errors and inefficiencies, we keep the high accuracy, and now we need high precision.

Starting anything new, like a career, business or idea, with high precision & low accuracy could be unproductive to say the least.

Overlap

There are many possible scenarios, and this is still a work in progress area. The one that comes to mind is a "creative" who took the engineering path. I often find myself talking about creatives as the cousins of engineers. They both love to solve problems. One from the emotional side of the spectrum and the other from the rational side. Both need the opposing side if they want to succeed in business.

A creative needs a certain level of rationality to run a successful, profitable business.

An engineer needs a certain level of emotional intelligence to run a successful, profitable business.

I am still exploring this unfinished topic, but for now, I have two archetypal suspects for entrepreneurial engineers :

1. The Artist Disguised as an Engineer (entrepreneur/innovator/inventor) who has the high tolerance for risk, can improvise and explore the unknown.
2. The Strategic Engineer (expert/consultant) likes to think strategically, anns systematically about the root cause of things and has enough of “doing yet another project”.

And you, which one do you feel leaning toward? How would you call yourself? Entrepreneurial engineer? Technical entrepreneur or else ? To share your thoughts with me hit "reply".

Engineeringly yours,

Othmane