ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION AND ENGINEERING EDUCATION – “NXT SOFT” CASE STUDY

It is generally acknowledged that in the last decades, technology entrepreneurship has become a significant global phenomenon and it should become a fundamental module of contemporary education in engineering and business administration. Education in entrepreneurship is important because it prepares the graduates to create and use the competitive advantage for a startup at company, local or national levels and to develop competences that are significant for both startups or large companies.

In nowadays marketplace, dominated by huge corporations with worldwide known brands and images, where merely every individual seems to fulfill his dream job and owns a clearly defined career path, it is almost an act of bravery to stand out as a different individual, who wants to start his/her own business. However, there are still hundreds of startup companies that succeeded in various fields of activity. There are many reasons that would motivate an individual to start his own company, including: autonomy, better use of skills, the everyday challenge to succeed on as many plans as possible. This article will discuss in detail about such reasons for choosing to build and work at a startup.

The paper describes the condition of the graduates from the Master program in Business Administration and Engineering, developed at the Faculty of Engineering in Foreign Languages from University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest. Further on, it is given a concrete example of how could three freshly graduated engineers start their own IT business together. The company, “NXT Soft”, has been successfully working for three years already and the rewards, as well as the demands, continue growing.

In this sense, the success indicators will be further described and discussed, within this paper, including: the desire to work for yourself, to utilize and broaden the area of skills, to do more customer interaction than at a regular job, to have a master degree in a technical field, which is also related to the business administration one.

In order to achieve success, a huge commitment, as well as strong challenges have to be faced everyday, such as: financial, the initial investment, work without getting paid, time, work more hours per week than at a regular job, responsibility to others, like the first employee who expects to get paid, to have a certain longevity and stability in the job. These challenges will be presented by comparison with the ones faced by an employee, as well as by a head (CEO) of a large company.

Finally, a comparison is made, between the successful industry of IT and the other industries, in order to illustrate what is the most profitable sector and the trend nowadays to have a startup and where others have succeeded.