Skill Training Project Management

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Entrepreneurial ventures that seek to commercialize new technology need to develop a clear path by which a theoretical claim, or a lab model can be transformed into a “real” product. Effective management of the product and production engineering effort is key, as technology ventures usually require many man-hours for research, development and engineering. Project management skills prove to be of great value in prioritizing tasks and in allocating resources. In addition, you will have to be able to get other people interested in your effort. Investors or managers are happy to take technical risks (much less so for market risks) when entrepreneurs or business developers can show that they understand how technological uncertainty will reduced to known risks. This requires excellent interpersonal skills as one can only convince others when one can listen.

Technical and engineering insight and foresight are important, yet most books and courses on entrepreneurship appear to neglect the engineering challenges that high-tech ventures face. In particular, project management is extremely valuable to technology ventures as it helps entrepreneurs and business developers to decompose the engineering effort into tasks, and to prioritize and sequence these tasks with the aim to reduce risks, minimize development time & costs.