Sunday, February 26, 2006

Engineering Pitt's Future

In a Comment down below, Harold Miller makes a point that deserves more prominence. He writes (in part):
Our engineering culture here should be a strong foundation to build on. There is at least some hope of fixing a company that has a good product and a bad business model or bad management, but the best business model or management won't fix a product that won't work.

We need to find more and better ways to link management talent with engineering talent. The executive-in-residence programs at the Technology Collaborative and the Life Sciences Greenhouse are one good way to do that.

I've made the same pitch in conversations with lawyers I know downtown, and with tech transfer folks in Oakland. I make it in casual conversations with foundation folks, and I make it in casual conversations with people with management skills -- at both junior and senior ends of the spectrum, and people in between the two. This is a problem that needs to be attacked from multiple directions at once. Talking about the problem won't solve it, but talking about it will eventually highlight what we're actually missing -- which isn't the new ideas, and isn't the money. What's missing are ways to give critical mass and energy to the overlapping networks that make a new economy go.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We've been building boats around here since the days of Lewis & Clark. If the area is naturally established for making anything, it is boats. With the economy slowly sinking, boat demand should rise.
Captain Jim, Recording

Anonymous said...

We could make oars, sails and propellers here. All the development people are trying to get a biotech software industry started, growing chips in a digital greenhouse with state money, blood money or whatever. Row, row, row your boat.