Origins of Engineering

The term engineer is derived from a Latin root ingenium. Inginium means a talent, natural capacity or clever invention. Even the term ingenious is used to mean the same. In early stages of human history, military organization needed to invent new ways to overcome enemy and to "engineer" means to overpower them. However, engineering as a profession was first organized in France during 18th century when engineerining corps were formed to oversee the construction and maintainance of roads, bridges, fortification, and other civilian construction. An institute was formed to train members. United states and Britain followed this with establishing engineering institutions in thier respective countries.

Chapter 06: Towards Management

In today's class a general case was established for studying management course. Human beings are capable of using language to communicate their desires or wants. Any such expressed wants can be met by others. Market is the place where one expresses a want or comes to know about existing or an emerging wants. Economics is the system concerned with production, demand, supply and consumption of human wants. A general term given for things that meet needs of humans is goods, services.

Business is a process of identifying new needs and building a system for developing products and services to satisfy those needs. Identifying new needs for the first time and converting that into a business is called entrepreneurship. Management is the process of supplying those goods and services on regular basis.
For instance in 1970's Microsoft identified need for software (OS) and made a business sense out of it. In the mid 1990's Sabeer Bhatia identified a need for email services and created Hotmail. In the late 1990's Google recognized need for "search", invented an algorithm and built a business around that. Such examples endless.

In the management part, course covers the ideas and concepts associated with management and functions that that make up the management process: Planning, organizing and staffing, Controlling and directing