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.