Empathic Entrepreneurial Engineering

David Fernandez Rivas, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.

"The writing style of David Rivas in this book is like a jazz musician playing Bach music. If you are a classic musician, you may think that the musician plays Bach wrongly. But if you just listen without reflection you may very well enjoy the music.

I am an engineer and reading the first 30 pages of this book in one go was hard for me, because Davids writing style in this book lacks any precision. Then I imagined David relaxed talking to me in the corridor of an engineering conference and with that in mind I could keep reading, without getting annoyed. I know David well. He is a good guy. He invents devices that can help millions of people. He does this because he is emphatic. David considered the problem of children having diabetes and needing their whole life injections. Many of them find it harder and harder to take the injections because it hurts. David took on this problem, by asking, listening to people, reading, doing experiments, and once having found the technical solution, starting a company to get the needless injection solution to the market.

His book is about acquiring empathy, persuasion, and knowledge skills to become an entrepreneurial engineer. These skills are not obtained by just reading his book. You have to apply them any time the occasion is there. David therefore advises to read the book as an entertainment non-fiction book. He advises to read it fast and only short sections at a time. Chapter one for instance should be red in 2 minutes. In the end that is what I did. I took his book to the beach and red short sections to my wife, because it was so funny.

So, if you want to be entertained and also become an empathic entrepreneurial engineer, then this book may help you. My final advice, read his book like you would listen to a jazz musician playing Bach. You may get into a mood to solve real problems that help humanity." Jan Harmsen