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<p>Sure, it will take time. I don’t expect this to happen overnight. But, like Confucius said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. You gotta start somewhere. </p>
<p>Frankly, I think what should happen is that the dynamism of the economy should be increased such that more entrepreneurship can occur to upend the old dinosaurs. Google, for example, didn’t even exist 10 years ago yet, amazingly, already employs about 20k people, and is still rapidly hiring. What makes that statistic even more amazing is that a great proportion of them are engineers. {For example, companies like GM obviously employ many times more people, but the vast majority of them are blue-collar laborers, with only a small percentage being engineers.} </p>
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<p>Ha! You say that facetiously but I think it contains the seed of an actually workable idea. The truth is, the Internet is no longer “hot” when it comes to startup/venture-capital funding. The hottest VC investment field right now is alternative/green-energy, and I would argue that the civil/structural engineers have an important role to play here, for example, not just in the obvious applications such as building better wind turbines or power plants, but also in the construction of environmentally friendly houses and office buildings with recycled materials and that minimize carbon/energy usage. Heck, I would argue that the latter has great potential because of its consumer marketing potential: rich people have demonstrated that they are willing to pay a premium in order to brag to their friends about how environmentally conscious they are. For example, the reason why the Toyota Prius is so popular is not really because it actually significantly reduces carbon emissions or overall costs - because the reductions are quite minor - but just because people just want to be able to say how environmental they are, regardless of whether they are actually truly helping the environment at all. But that just shows you that rich people, i.e. Hollywood celebrities, would surely pay a big premium to be able to say that they live in an environmentally friendly house or work in an environmentally friendly office building. That can ultimately mean big fat juicy margins for the engineering firms who build it. </p>
<p>[Robert</a> J. Samuelson - Prius Politics - washingtonpost.com](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/24/AR2007072401855.html]Robert”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/24/AR2007072401855.html)
[Say</a> ‘Hybrid’ and Many People Will Hear ‘Prius’ - New York Times](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/business/04hybrid.html?ex=1341288000&en=4beada66541df849&ei=5124]Say”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/business/04hybrid.html?ex=1341288000&en=4beada66541df849&ei=5124)</p>