Why Not Bring “Business for Engineers” to Your Technical Staff?

Dr. Arthur Davidson, Adjunct Faculty

Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept.

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890

artdav@ece.cmu.edu

www.ece.cmu.edu/~artdav

I am interested in helping engineers and technical specialists to understand the business that they support.  I believe this is important for the success of the business, and also for the development of the technical staff.  An experienced staff member who appreciates the interplay between business, engineering, and technology will have better communication with executives and customers, and will offer a higher value to the enterprise.

Each fall I teach a course for engineering undergrads at Carnegie Mellon University called “Business for Engineers.”  The students subscribe to the Wall Street Journal or Business Week for use as a text.  Ideas on economics, accounting, marketing, intellectual property, written and oral communication, project management, ethics and leadership, are discussed in class and used in homework.

Many of these topics are readily adaptable to the specifics of your organization, presented in one or two class sessions.  Here are examples:

· Money Talks! Balance sheets, income statements, double entry accounting.  Why Wall Street matters to engineers. 

· The Wright Brothers used both business acumen and engineering to solve the technical problems of flight and create a new industry.  The Wrights’ problems with patents are used to illustrate today’s pitfalls in the patent system.

· What IP should your company have:  How to identify and protect basic intellectual property for the enterprise, including disclosure and the importance of broadly written claims.

· Nonlinear Dynamics in Business and Engineering: shows how everyone in a company can do everything right, and still get the wrong results.  Uses Excel spreadsheet to calculate a nonlinear model of logistics.

· The Red Bead Experiment:  This is my adaptation of W.E. Deming’s classic experiment showing how management by objective can be distorted.

Terms: I will travel to your company site.  The material can be adapted for any size from a handful of students up to an auditorium. A class of 10 to 15 people, lasting about 90 minutes is ideal. Depending on class size and certain variables, I would expect compensation in the range of $200 to $400 per hour of class time.  If your company is not satisfied with my classes, I charge nothing.

Biography for Dr. Arthur Davidson at this LINK.

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