Présentation à la soirée OpenSkills. Quelques réflexions sur les convergences et challenges entre la vocation "ingénieur" et "entrepreneur".

1. Ingénieurs & entrepreneurs :
quelques réflexions
(à casser… ;-) )
Ir. Roald Sieberath
9.10.2014 - OpenSkills @ TheLabs.be

2. Disclaimer

3. Roald Sieberath
Formation
Ingénieur civil en informatique
Business : Solvay IACE,
Stanford EPGC, Louvain MBA
and business
Entrepreneur
Startup coach

4. StarTech (by WSL & ASE)

5. Ingénieurs…

6. Pourtant…

7. Quel ingénieur ?
(Alain Fayolle, EM Lyon)

8. Type A

9. Type B

10. Type C

11. Type D

12. Type X

13. Type Y

15. Startup vs. Large Company

16. Entrepreneur
• Rêve ou cauchemar ?
• “Mythe romantique de l’entrepreneur”

19. Ingénieur <> entrepreneur

20. Myth : Investors will love my idea !

21. Reality

22. manager <> entrepreneur

23. Myth :
a startup is a company, smaller
And should be managed in a similar way

24. Reality
A startup is a different animal
A company solves a known problem
A startup solves an unknown
problem
Management science is not (as)
relevant

25. Facteurs positifs
• Rigueur (?)
• Fast learner
• Travail en équipe
• Ingenire = trouver une solution
• Construire un modèle ; exécuter

26. Engineer lies…
“Everyone loves ‘cool ideas’ and new
technology.”
“I need to go-it alone to assure quality and
elegance.”
“We need to get functionality maximized
before we focus on customers.”
“Marketing is fluff and selling is black magic.”
“A good engineer hates unpredictability and
risk.”
“We can’t worry about making money until we
get it built.”
“Outside funding causes loss of control and
undue pressure to deliver.”

27. Entrepreneur challenges

28. “Comfortable with uncertainty”

29. Pitch

30. Tinker

31. Get out of the building

32. Product dev => customer dev

37. Build It And They Will Come
• Only true for life and death products
– i.e. Biotech Cancer Cure
– Issues are development risks and distribution,
not customer acceptance
• Not true for most other products
– Software, Consumer, Web
– Issues are customer acceptance and market
adoption
37

38. If
Startups Fail from a Lack of customers
not Product Development Failure
Then Why Do we have:
• process to manage product development
• no process to manage customer
development
38

39. Stop thinking, start doing !

40. Conclusion / Question ouverte :
Etre entrepreneur
MALGRÉ ingénieur ?