Sharing My Knowledge: Teaching Marketing Basics to Engineering Students

Jamie Katz, BSM 2018

Throughout my experience as a student preparing for exams, I have always been told, “you don’t truly understand the information unless you can teach it to a complete beginner.” Earlier this month, my marketing knowledge was put to this ultimate test.

Professor Raymond and Dr. Brown in the School of Science and Engineering invited the Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation to work with their Biomedical Engineering class on conducting market research.  Their second-year students are currently in the process of designing and producing their own biomedical devices that they might, at some point in the future, want to bring to market.

My task: teach sixty engineering students with no prior marketing background how to conduct a market analysis.

Why? Because it is essential that the makers of tomorrow understand the consumers that they will ultimately serve.  It doesn’t matter how technologically advanced your gadget is, if nobody wants to use it.

This lesson exemplifies the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration: you cannot be the best in your field if you are blind to your surroundings. Moreover, value in our innovation-driven economy comes from critical thinkers who are able to apply concepts from one field to their work in another.

Students come to Tulane to build career capital, and this experiential crossover-work between the Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the School of Science and Engineering will help ensure that Tulane students have diverse skillsets to rely on in the future.

The Lepage Center will bring business students to the Biomedical Engineering Lab at the end of the month for another hands-on workshop. I look forward to learning more about the students’ projects at that time!