Essentials of Engineering Leadership and Innovation

Pamela McCauley

• Editorial: CRC Press
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315357102
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Project Management

This book is a must-have resource for those engineering professionals seeking out best practice in engineering leadership and innovation. It is underpinned by years of applied experience in engineering settings, and is designed to develop and prepare engineers as leaders to accept the technical and managerial challenges that they will face as professionals

At a time when engineering and innovation in technology is of importance on so many fronts, this text encourages engineers and technical professionals to become effective, socially conscious leaders and innovators. The text and course material is designed to create an environment of interactive, high-engagement learning that will produce lifelong skills. Some of the many benefits of this book include:

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• Accompanying notes, instructor's manual, sample syllabi for qualifying textbook adoption;

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• A complementary website with a wealth of ancillary resources;

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• Case studies in STEM contexts;

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• An international approach, underpinned by years of experience in US settings;

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• Practical advice on how to distinguish yourself as an engineering leader;

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• A solid grounding in ethics and professional responsibility.

Drawing together best practice in engineering leadership education, and current research in the field, this book is an essential read for those wishing to develop expertise in engineering leadership. Current professionals in the field, educators as well as students of engineering wishing to excel, will all be particularly interested readers.

chapter one

A call to leadership

Leadership is an immense ability to compliment the technological expertise of any engineer. What’s more, it is the perfect capability if your goal is to get on, get noticed, and get your line of work on the move. Engineers can make a world of difference through their special careers. Primed with technological knowledge, and logical and problem-solving ability, engineers have the knowledge to produce things that make the world a better place.

As the pace of technical change gathers speed and the global economy becomes more interrelated, engineers will be required to become leaders in a broad range of fields including business, administration, law, medicine, government, and community service. Regardless of the field you choose to go into, you will be required to have exceptional communication and leadership skills to completely comprehend and solve the multi-faceted problems of our society. Tomorrow’s leaders must practice global cooperation, sustainability, innovation, moral values, honesty, judgment, and moral courage.

But what is leadership? Is it different from management? Can it be learned or are we born as leaders? Leadership is difficult to define. It is a feature that I believe all of us can relate to, although it is difficult to express in a wide context in a way that is relevant to all qualified engineers at all levels. The National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) has defined leadership relative to engineering as follows:

In an engineering context, leadership incorporates a number of capabilities which are critical in order to function at a professional level. These capabilities include the ability to assess risk and take initiative, the willingness to make decisions in the face of uncertainty, a sense of urgency and the will to deliver on time in the face of constraints or obstacles, resourcefulness and flexibility, trust and loyalty in a team setting, and the ability to relate to others. Leadership skills are also important to allow engineers later in their careers to help develop and communicate vision for the future and to help shape public policy. These leadership capabilities are essential for the professional practice of engineering and for the protection of public health, safety and welfare. [1]

A leader must identify goals and have the competence to plan the steps required to achieve them. This does not involve trying to comprehend grand corporate objectives. It includes projects and schedules inside your own range of work and goes further than that, as far as you can. Success as a leader involves identifying the proper results needed and knowing the correct steps, which also involves recognizing the wrong steps. Leaders must possess a clear understanding of what it takes to achieve the overall goal efficiently. And that entails doing the job quickly, effectively, on budget and on time.

A leader need not have complete knowledge; it is adequate to have somebody on the team who has the necessary expertise. It is essential for the leader to identify what is required, and where to get it. The extensive knowledge is vital, not the details. Identifying mistakes is frequently the best sign of leadership. Leaders motivate teamwork, without blame. They anticipate results, and look for answers when results are less than expected.

Thorstein Veblen, an American sociologist, in 1921 in his book The Engineers and the Price System argued that “… for a technocracy in which the welfare of humanity would be entrusted to the control of the engineers because they alone were competent to understand the complexities of the industrial system and processes and thereby optimize and maximize its output” [2]. In the international community, the United States has been the recognized global leader in engineering leadership for many years; however, this may be changing if effective strategies for implementing leadership throughout engineering education are not successful. Nonetheless, the United States has been considered the undisputed leader in science and technology and according to Richard B. Freeman [3]:

For the past half century the U.S. has been the world scientific and technological leader and the preeminent market economy. With just 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. employs nearly one-third of the world’s scientific and engineering researchers, accounts for 40 percent of research and development (R&D) spending, publishes 35 percent of science and engineering (S&E) articles, obtains 44 percent of S&E citations, and wins numerous Nobel prizes. [4]

America’s technological leadership globally can be traced to their massive investment in the educational sector, especially in the areas of science and technology. These can be deduced from the fact that 17 of the world’s top 20 universities are based in the United States [5].

Today, the United States is the foremost entrepreneurial economy for the reason that it applies latest knowledge in more segments than any other economy in the world.

According to Freeman [3],

Many companies on the technological frontier are American multinationals: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Dupont and so on. Analysts attribute the country’s rapid productivity growth in the 1990s/2000s to the adaptation of new information and communication technologies to production. Scientific and technological preeminence is also critical to the nation’s defense, as evidenced by the employment of R&D scientists and engineers in defense-related activities and in the technological dominance of the U.S. military on battlefields.

The United States still offers the world’s leading number of scientists and engineers, but East and Southeast Asia countries, most conspicuously China, have been gradually catching up with them. America’s lead is distinctive but declining [6]. There are two major reasons for the fear and concern that U.S. leadership in science and technology is ebbing. First and foremost, globalization and the speedy growth of other countries, such as China and India, in science and technology, may possibly make it more and more difficult for the United States to preserve its relative economic lead. Second is the trepidation of the science and technology building blocks inside the United States—science and engineering (S&E) education, infrastructure, and workforce—not being sustained. Assumed insufficiencies include expenditures on research and development (R&D), predominantly on fundamental research; problems with education in S&E; a lack of S&E workers; a growing dependence on foreign workforce; and the declining attractiveness of S&E careers to U.S. citizens.

As a proof of declining U.S. leadership in science and technology, many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, especially China, have begun to catch up with the United States in the area of higher education and in educating S&E specialists. The number of young people going to college has increased rapidly in these OECD countries and in many less developed countries, particularly China [5]:

Enrollments in college or university per person aged 20–24 and/or the ratio of degrees granted per 24-year-old and in several OECD countries (Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom and France) exceeded that in the U.S. In 2001–2002, UNCESCO data shows that the U.S. enrolled just 14 percent of tertiary level students less than half the U.S. share 30 years earlier.

In just nine years, from 2003 to 2012, China’s high-tech manufacturing sector grew fivefold, an increase that tripled its contributions to global high-tech manufacturing from 8 percent of the market to 24 percent. The United States, by comparison, made up 27 percent of the global total of high-tech manufacturing in 2012 [6].

Nonetheless, if the United States maintains or improves its effectiveness in moving knowledge from the university labs to money-making products, the U.S. comparative advantage in high-technology areas will be sustained longer than would otherwise be the case. The United States should not take for granted its leadership role in science and technology. Helpful guidelines will possibly assist and strengthen its foothold. Below are some strategic guidelines suggested by Titus Galama and James Hosek [7]:

• Establish a centrally coordinated, independent body to monitor and evaluate U.S. performance in science and technology over the long term: Comprehensive, objective assessments of U.S. performance in science and technology, performed periodically, are vital to ensuring its health. They can help to inform public debates, identify problems, and guide the development of new legislation. At the same time, they may quell exaggerated claims of the demise or success of U.S. science and technology.

• Facilitate highly-skilled immigration to allow the United States to continue to benefit from employing foreign S&E workers: Currently, offshoring of S&E is driven not only by a need to reduce costs but also by an increasing need to gain access to highly skilled labor. If firms cannot fill their S&E positions in the United States, they may decide to offshore or outsource R&D to take advantage of foreign S&E labor pools. High-skilled immigrants, whose numbers have grown much faster than that of the S&E degree holders in the United States, have been a major factor in the fast growth of the S&E workforce. Foreigners thus help to ensure that the benefits of innovation accrue in the United States by allowing innovative activity to remain and expand in the United States.

• Increase U.S. capacity to interact with science centers abroad and capitalize on the scientific and technological advances being made elsewhere: Economic strength and global leadership depend on a nation’s ability both to absorb and use new technologies and create them. As emerging nations become stronger in R&D, it will become more critical for U.S. researchers to pursue joint ventures, collaborative research, and residences in foreign universities and laboratories to learn about new technology invented elsewhere [7].

Engineering leadership

Put simply, engineers are educated to solve problems. As a group, we have accomplished this in multiple spheres as evidenced by the innovative products, services, and technologies that result from the application of engineering knowledge. The definition of engineering leadership has evolved as the global economy has changed many things including the way organizations react, product development, and team interaction. The common thread is the need to prepare and transform technical professionals into effective leaders and managers. A few other definitions of engineering leadership are as follows:

Engineering leadership consists of capabilities and values that transform technical people from individual contributors into those who can lead teams to deliver a complex multi-disciplinary product. [8]

Likewise, the definitions for “Engineering Leadership Education” abound. A comprehensive definition is provided by the University of Toronto, Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering:

Leadership education is about learning how to effectively handle complex, human challenges that often mean the difference between success and failure. Engineers are taught to think analytically and systematically. Leadership skills build on these strengths to make you a more effective engineer. More than just important, they are critical. [9]

Among all of the larger global issues, from engineering, better medicines, and preventing nuclear terror to securing cyberspace, there is still one group our community has underserved—this group happens to be ourselves. A community must be nurtured and prepared to address relevant engineering needs in order for its individuals to reach their full potential and effectively serve others. But according to one recent estimate, about 6 percent of the U.S. workforce is employed in STEM fields while the STEM workforce accounts for more than 50 percent of the nation’s sustained economic growth [10]. One key requirement for growth is for those who are educators, leaders, experts, managers, and practitioners to effectively educate and lead newcomers to the field.

Leadership means different things to different groups of people. More specifically, the term engineering leadership is a dynamic term having a handful of definitions. At its origin, leadership, of any kind, requires motivation and not solely self-motivation. It is critical for engineering leaders to focus on others, as well, and in particular also inspiring others to perform up to levels beyond what they otherwise would have believed they were capable of, to solve problems and recognize opportunities as they arrive.

We can then build on this foundational defi...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Author
• Introduction: How to use this book
• Chapter 1 A call to leadership
• Chapter 2 The role of creativity and innovation in leadership
• Chapter 3 Leadership within an organization
• Chapter 4 Distinguishing yourself as an engineering leader and learning your engineering leadership style
• Chapter 5 Establishing the vision as an engineering leader
• Chapter 6 Ethics and professional responsibility
• Chapter 7 Integration and execution: Putting it all together
• Index