> Entrepreneurs are known for their creativity and risk tolerance; engineers, mathematicians, and health care workers typically aren’t.
Lost me in the first line:
1) The moment an engineer takes a risk and starts a company we stop calling them an engineer and start calling them an entrepreneur. If your job title is "engineer" then you by definition haven't taken that risk, but that doesn't mean that a lot of entrepreneurs don't come from an engineering background. (I believe the term hereabouts is 'technical co-founder'.)
2) Creativity is vital to engineering if you're building anything remotely new or different. Just because the product of that creativity is useful doesn't mean it isn't creative.
Yeah, 100% agreed. Engineering and CS are way more creative than any business school will ever understand. Obviously this article wasn't written by someone who knows what he's talking about.
The risk profile might be a fair point. If you look at engineering and CS salaries though, it's logical to take less risks. Because the low risk option pays a lot more than in other fields. This makes any higher risk option inherently less attractive.
There's risk in managing an engineering career, though you're correct that there's a floor on that risk. Engineers, especially early in their careers, need to manage their personal development. I often talk to developers that have been writing terrible enterprise products for the same company for a decade. They're typically underpaid and underqualified to find a better position elsewhere.
One way to look at that is as poor risk management. Having marketable skills is mitigating risk that the job pool will not be a good fit for your skills next time you are looking for a job. Switching jobs periodically is generally more risk than not, and it's basically required these days since market rates for good software engineers grows a lot faster than employers are comfortable with. Most business models do not survive 10%+ growth in payroll every year.
The researchers surveyed current students and recent (one year) graduates of a pharmacy program. [0] They were not surveying job titles (like “technical co-founder” or “pharmacist”) but rather looking at what they call entrepreneural awareness, i.e. had the students “blended” business and technical education actually given them an ability to see business opportunities.
Lost me in the first line:
1) The moment an engineer takes a risk and starts a company we stop calling them an engineer and start calling them an entrepreneur. If your job title is "engineer" then you by definition haven't taken that risk, but that doesn't mean that a lot of entrepreneurs don't come from an engineering background. (I believe the term hereabouts is 'technical co-founder'.)
2) Creativity is vital to engineering if you're building anything remotely new or different. Just because the product of that creativity is useful doesn't mean it isn't creative.