I think that selection bias does a lot to discredit any conclusions drawn from the data. The data is drawn from facebook profiles. The founder of the plumbing fittings factory down the street from me is a lot less likely to have a facebook account than a web startup founder. Moreover just because I say I am a founder/CEO or that I have a phd/mba/xyz in my profile does not mean it is true...
Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies
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Re: Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies
#42Engineers use instincts, gut feelings and optimism when they find a opportunity and jump in often to be a entrepreneur. MBA's on the other hand evaluate risk and unknowns.
Engineers often create the companies and MBA's help them grow it to their potentials
Re: Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies
#43Coming from a business background, it's very difficult to create a product if you don't have engineering skills. It's the reason I learned how to code. Knowing how to sell isn't a useful skill if you don't have a product to sell!
Re: Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies
#44People that are trained to build things are more likely to start companies that build things, than those that are trained to administer businesses?
Also, did you know that the majority of mba students are engineers?
I am not sure why they needed a study for this. I was told this fact in engineering school in 1994.
Re: Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies
#45Here is the difference:
Engineers = Build First, Sell Later.
MBAs = Sell First, Build Later.Re: Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies
#46This isn't too surprising to me. An MBA doesn't teach you how to build anything, an Engineering degree does. The things that are important early on in most startups are the engineering things, not the business things.
I wouldn't say that exactly. "Business things" are incredibly important, particularly sales. But the very word Administration in the title MBA indicates that MBA is about shepherding a successful business, not bootstrapping one from scratch. In this light, an MBA could be the most important person because if they are good they could take a company from 10m to 20m just based on improving efficiency, but that's of little use if your revenue is only 10k.
Re: Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies
#47Their data doesn't support that conclusion. Actually, you can't make any conclusion without knowing total number of MSinE vs MBAs. Update: http://www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/R_ED2008.pdf (p.16) suggests there are a lot more business masters vs engineers masters (23.4% vs 7%). So at a first glance it does look like the conclusion is right.
MBAs and engineers are not mutually exclusive groups. I have an MBA+MSc myself and quite a few people in my MBA class had at least an undergraduate degree in engineering.
In my experience an engineer with 10 years of work experience + 2 years of MBA is much more rounded than an engineer with 12 years of work experience. Given the choice between an engineer or an MBA without an engineering background, I'd pick the engineer though.
Re: Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies
#48This is not an independent study or a "white paper". This is marketing for Identified. The study may be right or it may be wrong. But one thing is for sure: Identified has a vested interest to attract hackers to become members of Identified. So they publish headlines like this to make their way on to places like HN in the hopes it gets attention, and results in a membership bump. And by the 180+ upvotes I see as I type this, it's working.
You can trust that had the study resulted in MBAs being more likely to build and run companies, that this study would never have seen the light of day on its blog.
Re: Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies
#49I'm an engineer and have studied several MBA courses as part of my engineering management degree. MBA courses are heavily corporation oriented and have limited value for founders of organically grown start-ups.
Majority of the management techniques taught are economic only when applied at corporate scale.
Re: Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies
#50Their data doesn't support that conclusion. Actually, you can't make any conclusion without knowing total number of MSinE vs MBAs. Update: http://www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/R_ED2008.pdf (p.16) suggests there are a lot more business masters vs engineers masters (23.4% vs 7%). So at a first glance it does look like the conclusion is right.
MBAs and engineers are not mutually exclusive groups. I have an MBA+MSc myself and quite a few people in my MBA class had at least an undergraduate degree in engineering. In my experience an engineer with 10 years of work experience + 2 years of MBA is much more rounded than an engineer with 12 years of work experience. Given the choice between an engineer or an MBA without an engineering background, I'd pick the eng…
I agree. I've got a BS in Computer Science and an MBA, which is very common. A third of the class had undergrad engineering degrees.