The Business of Engineering

As previously mentioned, today is my last day at Lockheed Martin this summer. I have really enjoyed this job, and one thing that has made it really interesting is the number of on-site lectures that I have had the chance to attend over at Johnson Space Center. The lecture that I went to this morning was probably the most thought provoking of any of the talks that I have been to this year. Interestingly enough, the topic being discussed wasn’t engineering, but business. It was given by Karim R. Lakhani from the Harvard School of Business over the topic of innovation and techniques for managing distributed and open innovation.

Before going to the lecture I looked over a business case study that had been provided to attendees. The case study dealt with a t-shirt company called Threadless that uses a business model where customers submit t-shirt designs to the website and then other people vote on the best designs. The winning designs are then selected and made into shirts. A national retailer approached the company and offered to sell their shirts in their stores, and the study dealt with whether doing business with that store would be a good idea for the company. The ultimate goal of the talk was to see how NASA, and perhaps the rest of the aerospace industry, could benefit from this kind of model. I had to leave before a conclusion was reached, but everything that was said got me thinking about a different topic than what I normally stew over and I found it quite enjoyable.

I know that engineers are not supposed to enjoy business (I’ll be the first to admit that most of us equate business major with partying and slacking off), but I think that there are a lot of really fascinating aspects of the business world. Maybe this stems from my propensity to try and understand the big picture of what is going on with a situation whenever I am confronted with something new. Who knows? All I know is that I can see myself getting into management someday and really enjoying trying to work all of the kinks out of a big project. Maybe I’ll look into getting an MBA once I’ve spent some time in industry after I’m done with my master’s degree in engineering.

Or maybe I’ll just be sick of school at that point.