www.profeng.com
The home of
Professional Engineering
on the web
Professional Engineering
Home
Current Issue
News Extra
Tech extra
PE Blog
PE Extra
Letters
Archive
Search the Archive
About PE magazine
Contact
Search our back issues
Search
Subscribe to Professional Engineering magazine
Request a media pack
Our other magazines and journals:
Automotive Engineer
Engineering Opps
PEP Journals
TopEngineeringJobs.com
Related links and resources
PE Archive pre-2008
IMechE
Return to:
Prof Eng Home
Archive
2008 Issues Archive
26 November 2008
Print Page
Farsighted
A group of high-flying engineers with business skills wants to set up a think tank to help shape the future of manufacturing.
Ben Hargreaves
reports
Six months into his tenure as president of the Sainsbury Management Fellows’ Society, Ernie Poku is hoping to widen the organisation’s remit. Up to now it has acted as a network that helps gifted engineers who have picked up business skills on the Sainsbury Management Fellowship (SMF) scheme to keep in touch with each other.
Poku says: “We don’t just want to be an internal-looking organisation, but rather that we come together and actually try and make a difference externally. We feel like we’ve got the critical mass now.”
The SMF scheme itself was founded by Lord Sainsbury, who remains its patron, in 1987 to help “top engineers” to acquire business knowledge and skills by sponsoring them on courses at leading business schools. About 15 engineers are awarded fellowships each year.
Poku, who is chief executive and founder of Crescent Diagnostics, a university spin-out firm which is developing a novel test for osteoporosis, was sponsored to take an MBA at the Rotterdam School of Management in 1999. Almost a decade on, he finds himself at the helm of the SMF scheme’s society, and believes the engineers who have become fellows have much to offer.
“We’ve been going for more than 10 years and we’ve got to the point where there are about 250 members. Some of us are quite senior and successful. We hope to work in partnership with business, academia, the institutions and government to push certain initiatives, such as sustainability,” Poku says.
He believes that graduates from the SMF scheme could help to mediate between such – sometimes conflicting – groups, bringing to the table a special perspective on issues common to all, such as the future of manufacturing, or green transport. “As a result of learning those management skills [as part of the SMF] it gave us a different viewpoint,” Poku suggests. “It gave us the language and way of thinking of business, and that can be quite different from the way of thinking and language of engineering. Putting the two together produces a different beast.”
He hopes to establish a Manufacturing Trust, similar, perhaps, to the Carbon Trust – whose chief executive, incidentally, is Tom Delay, an SMF fellow. The trust would be an independent charity with long-term funding from industry, government and private individuals to support innovation in manufacturing and provide intellectual property education for engineers. Because of its funding and independence, in theory the trust would be immune to shifts in political or economic circumstances.
“Governments change but we see manufacturing as a core part of society,” Poku says. “We think there is an opportunity for a third-party organisation to say: ‘where do we want manufacturing to be in 10 years?’. We need to invest for the long term, and we think there is an opportunity to create a Manufacturing Trust that will look at the industry in the long term.”
Poku is also focusing on the development of an energy roundtable. He thinks SMF fellows have something to contribute in the energy debate, and hopes that the roundtable will deliver a policy statement on sustainable energy next year. “The dialogue has become hackneyed,” Poku suggests.
He also thinks that some engineers who have business qualifications but who haven’t been involved with the SMF could become “honorary” members to bolster the expertise within the organisation. Perhaps, he adds, engineering business could be served by a greater number of SMF fellows becoming non-executive directors. “They can bring that broader vision, that strategic vision.”
Poku says his own company, Crescent, has just completed a successful funding round, and has now raised more than £1 million. “We are looking at having a product on the market next year.”
He admits: “It has had its ups and downs, but every time we think we’re going to collapse we get the result we need.”
Poku says the main difference between being an engineer and an entrepreneur is that the buck stops with businesspeople when they make decisions. “I like the fact that when you’re an engineer it’s collaborative and everyone checks your work.
There’s a lot of freedom that goes with running a business, but you stand or fall by your decisions. Often you have to make tough decisions on your own based on incomplete information. Engineers, by contrast, will add safety factors and try to calculate out ambiguity.”
The next step for Poku is to discuss funding for some of these new SMF developments with the man who started it all, Lord Sainsbury. “He’s the patron and we need his involvement.”
Poku believes the fellows’ society is primed to help UK business deal with some of the tough issues facing it today. “Because we are the kind of organisation we are, engineers with a strong business focus, there isn’t really anything else like that in the UK. Now we’ve got 250 people we’re ready to be a place people can come to for expertise in business and a range of policy areas.”
© PE Publishing, 26 November 2008
