ENTREPRENEURIAL MBA?
Loading ...An increasing number of universities and colleges are offering courses in “Entrepreneurship” as part of their business education. Around the world, business plan competitions are held by academic institutions at regular intervals. The wide publicity given to “entrepreneurship” in recent times has resulted in entrepreneurs gaining respect and being acknowledged as critical participants in a country’s economy, wealth and job creation.
But does taking a course or two in entrepreneurship while pursuing a business degree make one a better entrepreneur? My own view conditioned by many years of experience is that a business degree, with or without courses in entrepreneurship, is not material at all. Then are all these courses useless? Well, no they’re not! They’re useful for learning and understanding multiple aspects of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship but don’t, in any way, make one a better and successful entrepreneur. A small percentage of any population become entrepreneurs while the vast majority become employees. There’s nothing good or bad or right or wrong about this – it is just the way it is and indeed should be as both entrepreneurs and managers-employees perform complementary activities in the growth of an economy.
It is said that entrepreneurship cannot be taught but it can be learned. And what better learning environment than the real world, through interacting with other more or differently experienced entrepreneurs, customers, investors, partners and suppliers?
Entrepreneurship is not a traditional discipline with theoretical constructs unlike say, engineering where one needs to spend many years in a classroom learning the sciences and mathematics. Entrepreneurship is more an art therefore than a science. The study of entrepreneurship offers opportunities for researchers and academics though! One doesn’t, for example, learn swimming from reading books in a classroom but by being in a swimming pool with the help of a coach. But even the best coach in the world will not and indeed cannot prevent the novice swimmer from unintentional and painful swallowing of water the first few times! Without that experience of “drowning”, learning from others and then through rigorous practice, it is impossible to be a quality swimmer.
In countries like India, most students doing their MBA have no or little work experience. Their ability therefore to spot opportunities, appreciate scenarios, develop and leverage relationships is limited compared to those with experience. It also doesn’t help that academic institutions in India are insulated from industry, entrepreneurs and the entrepreneur eco-system.
Yet, why are investors almost always are biased in favour of entrepreneurs with degrees from well known business schools? The reason is that, all other things being equal, the degree is a filter – demonstrates that the holder has passed other stringent selection criteria. It is obviously not perfect. On the other hand, many professional investors and many senior executives in the corporate sector are usually business school alumni so having a degree leads to membership into alumni networks that can be leveraged by the entrepreneur. Business schools teach students to analyse situations and excessive analysis leads to paralysis. Business schools teach students to manage risks. Business schools, however, don’t teach students to take risks while solving problems and addressing opportunities because risk-taking cannot be taught. In real life, decisions are taken with incomplete information with imperfect people being involved. Decisions are taken on a “leap of faith” basis and persevering when all analysis suggests otherwise requires self-belief and conviction. These cannot be taught in a class-room situation. They can only be learnt through experience, introspection and with the help of a mentor.
Now here’s an exercise worth doing. Business school education in the US is about 100 years old and about 45 years old in India. During this time, how many “successful” companies, across all sectors of the economy, were founded by MBA entrepreneurs in either country? “Successful” meaning wealth creators and not lifestyle income-substitution businesses like consultancies. I believe that this number would be a very small fraction.
keep in mind therefore that while there are many attributes of a successful entrepreneur, having a MBA isn’t one! What do you think?
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Comments
I agree with most of your thoughts, Sanjay.
Myself – am a management graduate from top rated schools focused on entrepreneurship (EDII in India and Babson College in US). I agree that, I am learning most things by actual swimming as I started working on my own business (onion.tv)
Nonetheless, it is also true that entrepreneurship schools help you minimize the odds of your failure as it provides you an experience that adds to your thoughts process and makes you more skilled and aware as you start swimming. Moreover, there are plenty of things, you learn in school that opens up your mindsets for opportunities and growth strategies.
I learned to think like a business man (previously was a technical guy) and understood the importance of entrepreneur’s visionary thoughts and cash flow at EDII. Babson College expanded my knowledge about entrepreneurship with real case studies, making me aware of venture growth and capital, buying small business, search funds and lots of other valuable things.
But still, startup success is not guarantee for an MBA / Entrepreneurial graduate. Startup is a different ball game. All it matters is your passion and commitment – knowledge adds up as you swim. The first 18 months is usually your MBA in startup 
School Links: (Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India http://www.ediindia.org and Babson College http://bit.ly/babson-facts)
Great article Sanjay – thanks for the same. I myself is a non-MBA entrepreneur and doing my business (S7 Software) successfully and my line is – best way to learn swimming is to jump into water and when your life depends on it, you generally do a great job and will surely learn lot of tricks while on the field.
Someone had said that when you pass a degree in Physics, you become a physicist but when you pass a degree in Entrepreneurship you wont automatically become an Entrepreneur!!!
Manjunath M Gowda, S7 Software