Magna Parva director Andrew Bowyer

There’s probably never been a more important time for engineers to be good at business. With the government desperate for a manufacturing revival to boost economic growth, the pressure is on for UK engineering firms to turn good ideas into moneymaking ventures.

It’s a shame, then, that one of Britain’s most prominent entrepreneurs, Lord Alan Sugar, doesn’t think engineers make good business people he drew vigorous criticism for stating so on his popular TV show, ’The Apprentice’.

Magna Parva optics structure for the imaging X-ray spectrometer on the Mercury Planetary Orbiter

Surprisingly, it’s a view that Andrew Bowyer, an engineer by training and commercial director of one of the UK’s most exciting young research firms, Magna Parva, seems to have some sympathy with. ’I certainly don’t think business people make good engineers,’ he says, ’and so I didn’t try.’

Having left school at 16 for an apprenticeship and then an engineering degree, Bowyer now calls himself a salesman and, when he founded Magna Parva in 2005 with partner Miles Ashcroft, he was clear that he wanted to stay focused on bringing in the money. ’I love being immersed in engineering but I took the decision that I would step away from doing actual engineering work.’