Engineers are people who naturally learn from what is around them. The culture in which engineers thrive is, by nature, a learning culture. That learning culture is something we are trying to implement today at our Company. The first one is a small one, but still valid. The second handicap is much more fundamental.
Engineers can find it very difficult to trust their instincts.
A story from our business illustrates what I mean. Several years ago, our Company was presented with an opportunity that packaged consumer-goods companies can only dream about. East Germany had 17 million people, who drank a lot of really terrible soft drinks produced by the state system. They hadn't had an ice-cold CocaCola in 40 years. The engineer could see that the stability of the German mark was in question, and the real estate market was less than certain.