The Entrepreneurial Engineer

The authors, educators and successful entrepreneurs, wrote this textbook with the goal of maximizing your chance of entrepreneurial success. It is designed to encourage those who want to start a business and those who have already begun. It includes guidance, instruction, and practical lessons for the prospective entrepreneur. The book focuses on early stage financing of a startup company, beginning with an emphasis on constructing an effective business plan, including writing techniques to help convey your message, and preparing solid financial statements. This “why” and “how” of writing a business plan is followed by recommendations on raising outside capital. Important topics include developing your marketing strategy, recruiting and managing creatives and managers, and retaining effective employees. Legal structures, negotiation strategies, and economic evaluation of opportunities are also discussed. The book concludes with a chapter on project management. The book includes many engineering economy topics, sufficient for those who will be taking the FE Exam.

Dr Michael B. Timmons is a professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. Dr Timmons is a successful entrepreneur and has led successful fund raising efforts from both angel investors and venture capitalists. In 1997, Dr Timmons' first major entrepreneurial venture was launching an indoor fish farm, in upstate NY, called Fingerlakes Aquaculture, LLC. His teaching and the lessons learned from this experience prompted Timmons to begin writing this textbook. Dr Timmons is one of the recognized authorities on recirculating aquaculture technologies and co-author of the text Recirculating Aquaculture (Timmons/Ebeling). He was one of the founders of the Aquacultural Engineering Society and has served in several officer positions including President. In the Spring of 2012 Timmons launched Kentucky Natural Organics, LLC, a 500,000 lb/yr tilapia farm and a facility for the hydroponic production of leafy greens and tomatoes.

Dr Rhett L. Weiss is the Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, where he teaches graduate students in the entrepreneurship and venture capital areas. Before joining Cornell, he had more than 25 years of experience in leadership and management roles. Dr Weiss has served as a bank COO, directed a consulting practice at a Big 4 accountancy firm, practised law at a major international law firm, and attained a software and business method patent. Throughout his career, he has been involved in more than $30 billion-worth of transactions and in dozens of entrepreneurial ventures and innovation initiatives. Among them, he is Chairman and CEO of DEALTEK, which he founded in 1999. From 2005 to 2010, he served as Senior Team Leader - Strategic Development for Google. He was chief designer and negotiator of several large strategic acquisition and development projects for Google's global infrastructure. He headed key initiatives, contracts and relationships with businesses, utilities, governments, economic development agencies, landowners and other stakeholders. Dr Weiss also created and conducted negotiation training workshops in Google's offices globally. He is a frequent presenter and writer on negotiations, entrepreneurship and economic development. The transactions that he has led have often received industry recognition, awards and coverage in business and technology news articles.

John R. Callister is the Harvey Kinzelberg Director of Enterprise Engineering in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at Cornell University. He teaches Introduction to Entrepreneurship and Engineering Enterprise in MAE and the School of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. This course is the first in a program in entrepreneurship and personal enterprise for engineers, but enrolment is not limited to engineers. Callister is co-founder and vice-president of Foxdale, Inc., an equipment leasing company in the blown-film polymer industry. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1999.

Daniel P. Loucks is a Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Institute of Public Affairs at Cornell University. His research focuses on the application of systems analysis, economic theory, ecology, and environmental engineering to problems in regional development and environmental quality management. He has taught at a variety of universities in the United States, Australia and Europe and has been a consultant to international, governmental and private organizations dealing with regional development issues. He served as an economist at the World Bank and as a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. Loucks was a naval aviator and eventually commanded the largest naval air transport squadron in America. He is the co-editor (with J. S. Gladwell) of Sustainability Criteria for Water Resource Systems.

James E. Timmons has over thirty years' experience managing complex development programs with budgets of up to $250 million dollars, and with more than 1,100 personnel under his management responsibility. He is experienced in both government and the private sector. His special expertise is in providing and managing operational and maintenance support requirements and structure for complex mechanical systems. He has developed, produced, maintained and implemented support plans and programs for a variety of Department of Defense systems. Most recently he has been involved with the mechanical, electrical and fluid interface requirements between several of the International Partner modules to the International Space Station.