Engineering economy: The crossroads of business, engineering, and entrepreneurship

Creative minds often times have innovative ideas for designing products and services that may lead to successful businesses but these potential entrepreneurs often need an outside perspective from practitioners trained in business and engineering that can analyze potential ideas, perform engineering economic analyses, and help construct business plans to help entrepreneurs proceed in a fiscally responsible and systematic manner. Engineering economy is at the center of each and every business decision made in today's fast paced business world. Whether it be a rate of return analysis, payback analysis, net present worth analysis or a host of other engineering economic analyses, the ultimate decision to fund an engineering project, merger, acquisition, or to provide venture capital to an entrepreneur comes down to using the basic principles learned in engineering economy. This paper discusses the evolution of an engineering economy curriculum and the birth and success of a business and engineering student group that grew out of the engineering economy course that has grown from six to over 70 active members in just two years. All students in the student group completed the engineering economy course as sophomore or junior engineering students and have gone on to serve as financial advisers for the current engineering economy students, sponsor company case competitions, and most recently serve as consultants in the local community to help startup businesses. The paper discusses the evolution of the student group from the engineering economy course and the work of the entrepreneurship consulting group that is receiving much attention from program advisory board members, startup businesses, and university leadership.