Business development in engineering

Overview

Engineering students need to understand that the future is more than being just an engineer. There is a need to capture innovation and creativity within the engineering world and encourage young engineers to be entrepreneurial for themselves, or their organisations. In the following set of topic areas, you will be introduced to some sources of business risk and a simple system of rating risks. The second resource will help you consider the reasons why a startup enterprise might want/need to grow and how to help minimise the risks of rapid growth.

Overarching themes

• Understand why risk is an essential element of enterprise.
• Be able to state the main categories and sources of business risk with engineering examples.
• Understand how success criteria and fail conditions can be used to make informed decisions of next steps.
• Understand reasons to scaleup and grow with associated risks.
• State operational areas to focus on when growing or scaling up and their importance.

Risk and failure in enterprise

Scaling and growth for enterprise