The importance of marketing to engineers

One of the underlying problems of relatively poor British industrial performance has been the lack of the recognition of the synergy that exists between the engineering and management disciplines, Traditionally engineers and scientists in the UK have seen themselves only as inventors or creators of systems and have left businessmen to worry about the possibility of their commercial exploitation. Very many British technological ideas and scientific breakthroughs which should have rightly benefited Britain commercially have gone elsewhere, in the main US and Japan, where people had been more adventurous and commercially minded enough to commercialize them. Engineers have thought of themselves as engineers only and nothing more. This state of affairs has not fostered cross-fertilization between the creators on the one hand and those with the capital and acumen to commercialize the creations on the other. This paper articulates the importance of training engineers in management and marketing. The author discusses the role of the engineer in society, business systems and purposes, new product development and marketing, the role of marketing in business success, the role of engineer-managers in business success, and the challenges and opportunities for engineers