I think you may need to reconsider your statement that you have never met an Engineer who can turn his hand to business. Whilst I can appreciate that you may have had bad experiences working with Engineers in the past and that has coloured your opinions your statement is just plain ridiculous.

I find it hard to believe that you have not been introduced to James Dyson at some point - especially given your involvement with the previous government. Just in case you haven't he's that chap who makes vacuum cleaners and is worth almost twice as much as yourself.

Similarly I find it hard to believe you're not aware of one William Henry Gates. He's was a Software Engineer - started a small company that did ok. Mind you - he's now worth over 40 times what you are so you've probably not met him because he doesn't want to associate with riff-raff.

Let's not mention the likes of Steve Jobs [little bit debateable but he was #3 on that uk engineering heroes poll] and Steve Wozniak - but then you did predict the iPod would be a failure so Mr Jobs probably avoids you. And of course Sergey Brin and Larry Page over at Google - no business acumen there at all. Robert Noyce died whilst you were still up and coming so I can appreciate you've probably never met him! Theres also a guy called Elon Musk out there - he's got a few sucessful businesses to his name as well. And those are just a few that spring to mind - I'm sure my colleagues here could name many more.

So about reconsidering that statement ?

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Jake Greenland, CEng MIET.
CCIE #22595

Edited: 16 June 2011 at 04:40 PM by jakegreenland

well said that man. He probably bitter against engineers as the engineers at seagate (the hard drive people) flogged him a load of rubbish and cost him 150£M back in the 90's.

P

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Lack of planning on your part doesn't make it an emergency on mine....

Every man has to know his limitations- Dirty Harry

Very well put Jake.

Does Sir Alan have permissions to read these posts?

I hope that members used the BBC complaints procedure to register an objection to Alan Sugar's outburst against Engineers. I did but I'm not sure about the effectiveness. I received a fairly standard reply but at least the Beeb know that one person objected to the pronouncement that Engineers don't make entrepreneurs.

This may be why we have many businesses failing - wrong people running them.
Europe's successful businesses tend to be run by Engineer's

Tim Guy
MSc MBA