Ned Moore, Judy Pharo, Shahryar Sheibani and Mark Hollingworth PHOTO: OWEN EGAN

Paving the way for entrepreneurial engineers

BRONWYN CHESTER | Turning the greatest of ideas into the greatest of products and the greatest of business successes doesn't necessarily come naturally to soon-to-be engineers. Alas, not everyone is a born Daniel Langlois, founder of Softimage, or an Anita Roddick, mastermind of the Body Shop stores. But the entrepreneurial skills needed to turn an idea into a marketable product can be learned and the Faculty of Engineering's newly launched Minor in Technological Entrepreneurship aims to teach them. The MET is the brainchild of the faculty's student advisor, Judy Pharo, and former associate dean (academic) Ron Neufeld. Two years ago, they read an article on technological entrepreneurship as an emerging area in engineering and began studying the implementation of such a program at McGill. Under the leadership of the faculty's director of liaison with industry, Mark Hollingworth, the six-course minor was hammered out between the Faculties of Engineering and Management. The result: as of the beginning of this month, 10 undergraduate engineering students (and a handful of graduates who are auditing these first two courses) are learning the makings of a leader and how to raise and manage the finances of a technology-based enterprise. Courses in managing human resources, marketing and a special project in technological entrepreneurship related to each student's own particular ideas, will follow. A final course, on developing a business strategy, ties together all that the students have learned. What's key to the whole program is that the work and assignments deal with real-life situations and that most of the teachers are, or recently have been, active in business, and, in some cases, technological enterprises. It's a program that fourth-year mechanical engineering student Ned Moore most welcomes. As project leader of the faculty's solar car team, Moore finds that what he's learning in the leadership course is immediately applicable. "It's almost a lab course," he chuckles, adding that he has learned the importance of "being a positive role model for the people reporting to you." Moore already has in mind the product he would like to market -- something in the medical field, he's not divulging more -- suggested by his mother, who is a physiotherapist. "I think it could make money," he says. Shahryar Sheibani too is quite directed in what he wants to get out of the progam. In his last year of electrical and computer engineering, what he especially likes about the MET is that it culminates in the development of a business plan for a specific product or concept that is exposed to the rigorous scrutiny of real high-tech companies, such as Montreal's Innovitech. "A popular route for engineers is to do a minor in management, but I saw this as a better alternative," says the 21-year-old Sheibani who intends to use his entrepreneurial skills in his family's clothing business. Jason Yuen, on the other hand, was attracted to the program due to his work experience in both large and small companies. Discouraged by the lack of mobility and the compartmentalization of work that he saw at Nortel, for instance, the electrical and computer engineering student wants to gain skills useful to small companies where, in his experience, you get to participate in many aspects of production. Adds Yuen, in a smaller firm, when the company "hits it big, everyone gets shot up." Like Moore, Yuen is a team leader, and he is using his experience as captain of the 120-member McGill Ski Team in his course on leadership. In the class on leadership, the students are required to keep a personal journal and a leadership plan. "They have to learn that before they can lead others, they must lead themselves," says management professor Manuel Mendonça. "I ask them to visualize what they'd like to be." After seeing a video on Nike CEO Phil Knight (one of 18 leaders studied), an exciting leader but "bad on process," Yuen began to wonder if he didn't share a little of Knight's characteristic of not consulting with those he leads. "Sometimes I say: 'OK, let's do this, without holding a vote,'" says Yuen, adding: "I don't want to risk losing their trust." "The ideal leader," interjects Mendonça, "is one who leads and empowers at the same time." Gandhi and Martin Luther King fall into that category, he says. The introspective aspect of the leadership course is a relief to Yuen, who says that "in engineering classes, you don't talk, you don't ask questions. No wonder engineers have no social skills." On the other hand, counters Ian McLachlin, who teaches the MET course on technological entrepreneurship, "an engineering background is valuable because it teaches you to think in a focussed way." McLachlin ought to know. He began his career as an engineer, spent 28 years as an investment banker, and now teaches full-time in the Faculty of Management, all the while running a nursing home. What Mark Hollingworth, who is both an engineer and holder of an MBA, hopes is that this program will marry that "focussed way" of looking at the world with the "soft skills" of knowing oneself, dealing with people and communicating ideas. "I hope this program becomes a major attraction for students in engineering and that it will make them better either as individuals or as professionals."