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RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise

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Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise

#51

Post by jeremytliles »

plinkplonk wrote: post #43
lanceweatherby wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a real example. Pretend like you are in a finance class. It's a case study. On Microsoft buying Yahoo! Determine how much Microsoft should be willing to pay for Yahoo! and the assumptions and rationale behind your conclusion. Or how much is AOL worth as a spinout of Time Warner. The core of the answer lies in something called the Capital Asset Pricing Model and it is as every bit as complex as the fixed point…

"The core of the answer lies in something called the Capital Asset Pricing Model and it is as every bit as complex as the fixed point combinator for which YC was named." Well I don't think the y combinator is a particularly complex concept and I did accept finance as hard and explicitly asked for non finance examples, :-) but that said I see your point (upvoted!). "doing real market research for a natural foods store…

Some of the coursework is difficult precisely because it is unstructured. I didn't find the finance courses to be particularly difficult because the problems typically fit into a fairly neat structure: "price this option" or "value this project/company".

One of the more difficult courses I had focused on managing small-to-medium businesses. The issues and cases we discussed tended not to be quantitative in nature, but really honed critical thinking. A particular case I remember dealt with a struggling, family-owned company whose founder/CEO had just died in the midst of an IP lawsuit, etc. (I don't remember all the details). Imagine you are brought in to run the company. What do you do first, second, third, fourth? The challenges are legal, financial, technical, and interpersonal. There are multiple crises: which do you delegate, which have to be dealt with immediately, and which can wait? What information do you need and from where are you going to get it? The answers are not always obvious and don't necessarily fit inside a neat framework. This is "hard" in a different way from advanced quantitative analysis of futures and options.

Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise

#52

Post by plinkplonk »

jeremytliles wrote: post #51
plinkplonk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The core of the answer lies in something called the Capital Asset Pricing Model and it is as every bit as complex as the fixed point combinator for which YC was named." Well I don't think the y combinator is a particularly complex concept and I did accept finance as hard and explicitly asked for non finance examples, :-) but that said I see your point (upvoted!). "doing real market research for a natural foods store…

Some of the coursework is difficult precisely because it is unstructured. I didn't find the finance courses to be particularly difficult because the problems typically fit into a fairly neat structure: "price this option" or "value this project/company". One of the more difficult courses I had focused on managing small-to-medium businesses. The issues and cases we discussed tended not to be quantitative in nature, bu…

"A particular case I remember dealt with a struggling, family-owned company whose founder/CEO had just died in the midst of an IP lawsuit, etc. (I don't remember all the details). Imagine you are brought in to run the company. What do you do first, second, third, fourth? The challenges are legal, financial, technical, and interpersonal. There are multiple crises: which do you delegate, which have to be dealt with immediately, and which can wait? What information do you need and from where are you going to get it?"

And how do you know any of the answers you come up with to the above questions are the correct ones?

For example, "There are multiple crises: which do you delegate, which have to be dealt with immediately, and which can wait?"

So I say "delegate crisis one and deal with crisis two immediately". You reverse that answer. Who is right? I am sure two intelligent people can go back and forth for quite a while justifying each answer. Such questions arise in the social sciences as well.

If you have at least a simulation, you can ,(within the assumptions of the simulation - how these map to the real world is a separate discussion/debate) try out your "answers" and see which one works better.

In the absence of a vlaidating/correcting mechanism, how can you ever know what the right answer is or how good your "solution" is?

I've personally found MBA case studies of dubious instructional value (but great entertainment value). It gives you something to do in class, but how much does it really teach?

Where there isn't a way to judge the validity or otherwise of an answer, (in my experience) the most articulate person "wins" and since you are not responsible for implementing the answer in the real word and suffer the consequences therof, it is fairly easy to construct an argument for one ooption or the other. What stops this from happening in an MBA "case study"?

Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise

#53

Post by carbon8 »

plinkplonk wrote: post #50
carbon8 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what part of the coursework was hard, not the actual practice of business An MBA is practicing business, at least at the top tier schools (possibly at the others, I don't know). Most of the focus is on case studies and group projects tackling real business issues, usually from real businesses, sometimes simulating what you would do and sometimes actually dealing with the actual company. Group projects in part time pr…

"An MBA is practicing business," This is the first time I've ever heard an mba as practice (vs a study of theory) in running a business. Great insight (if true). "Most of the focus is on case studies" A case study is not quite practice, more like a review I'd think. If this concept is adopted , analysing Napoleon's campaigns would be "practicing war" , reading about Bruce Lee's fighting style(and even debating about…

This is the first time I've ever heard an mba as practice (vs a study of theory)

Considering that this is the basic model of MBA programs, not to mention that it's also the basic model of pretty much any professional graduate program in pretty much any field, I'm left wondering how this is the first time you've encountered it.

A case study is not quite practice, more like a review I'd think.

When you are reading, but not a project. Even if it's a project to make a decision based on historical conditions, students are doing exactly what they'd be doing if they were running the company or division, and in most cases they are or will be running those or similar companies and divisions making the same kinds of decisions in the same ways, which is the whole point.

This is more like it

During the course of working on the project it's really exactly the same as the above.

Well, this will become a "real business" when it is actually running? I mean, till it runs this planning is as good as anyone else's? ... This is more in line with "practicing business"

It's really no different. Look, her school is a top-tier business school and the business we are talking about aren't social web startups. When you are dealing with industries that require a large capital investment, it's often much harder to start and the consequences much worse when you fail. I've had to take more than 6 figures of investment for a web company and I've never needed to give up more than equity and sometimes some strategic guidance, whereas in other industries I might expect to be signing a personal guarantee, possibly even having an investor become an integral part of operations. So when we are talking about planning a business, we aren't talking about a web company with a one page business plan.

Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise

#54

Post by mariorz »

unalone wrote: post #40
mariorz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On the other hand, there're a lot of people online who are famous for being famous: people like Julia Allison or Cory Doctorow come to mind. that line doesn't seem to follow logically from it's previous one. seems almost like you went out of your way to diss these people on the internet. in any case, i have to say that i've enjoyed what few i've read from doctorow.

I try not to take needless potshots: in this case I think the two names I picked fit my argument perfectly. These aren't people who are famous thanks to credentials or expertise: they're famous because it's easy to be famous online regardless of aptitude or skill. Julia Allison is pretty harmless - she's a socialite, and part of being a socialite has always been fame-seeking - but Doctorow is a lot more insidious. He…

How are his writings "fairly clueless"? Any examples? I've found him to be a very clear thinker wrt to copyright and privacy. I've read a little of his fiction and that wasn't bad either. The blog he started btw is also reliably interesting.

Side note: Good News, I think this Allison person is less famous that you think. I'd never heard of her at least.

Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise

#55

Post by unalone »

mariorz wrote: post #54
unalone wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try not to take needless potshots: in this case I think the two names I picked fit my argument perfectly. These aren't people who are famous thanks to credentials or expertise: they're famous because it's easy to be famous online regardless of aptitude or skill. Julia Allison is pretty harmless - she's a socialite, and part of being a socialite has always been fame-seeking - but Doctorow is a lot more insidious. He…

How are his writings "fairly clueless"? Any examples? I've found him to be a very clear thinker wrt to copyright and privacy. I've read a little of his fiction and that wasn't bad either. The blog he started btw is also reliably interesting. Side note: Good News, I think this Allison person is less famous that you think. I'd never heard of her at least.

She had a Wired cover. That counts as famous.

Doctorow is a "clear thinker" if you're fine with his oversimplifying matters and making a lot of assumptions about things that he shouldn't be making. He's a bit too bloodthirsty about killing copyright: he seems all-too-willing to abandon all traditions just because things are changing. I don't think that "get rid of everything" is at all a measured response to the issues at hand. Similarly, whenever he talks about art I want to jab a fork between my eyes. The guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He knows less about what he's talking about than I do on the same issues, and I'm not particularly well-versed in the subject.

His fiction is terrible. That he was nominated for awards with that one story of his just saddens me. It's cliched, poorly-written, and really not all that interesting.

Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise

#56

Post by mariorz »

unalone wrote: post #55
mariorz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are his writings "fairly clueless"? Any examples? I've found him to be a very clear thinker wrt to copyright and privacy. I've read a little of his fiction and that wasn't bad either. The blog he started btw is also reliably interesting. Side note: Good News, I think this Allison person is less famous that you think. I'd never heard of her at least.

She had a Wired cover. That counts as famous. Doctorow is a "clear thinker" if you're fine with his oversimplifying matters and making a lot of assumptions about things that he shouldn't be making. He's a bit too bloodthirsty about killing copyright: he seems all-too-willing to abandon all traditions just because things are changing. I don't think that "get rid of everything" is at all a measured response to the issu…

doctorow doesn't have a "get rid of everything" position on copyright. i don't know where you got that from. He argues creators should still maintain a monopoly on selling their art.

but back to your original claim, you may not like his writing but you have to acknowledge that other people do. not only does he write, but he does so about important and relevant topics, and from a point of view too often ignored by a large part of society. in the very least, to write him off as a paris hilton is dishonest if not asinine.

Re: RIP, MBA - The economic crisis has exposed the myth of business-school expertise

#57

Post by unalone »

mariorz wrote: post #56
unalone wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She had a Wired cover. That counts as famous. Doctorow is a "clear thinker" if you're fine with his oversimplifying matters and making a lot of assumptions about things that he shouldn't be making. He's a bit too bloodthirsty about killing copyright: he seems all-too-willing to abandon all traditions just because things are changing. I don't think that "get rid of everything" is at all a measured response to the issu…

doctorow doesn't have a "get rid of everything" position on copyright. i don't know where you got that from. He argues creators should still maintain a monopoly on selling their art. but back to your original claim, you may not like his writing but you have to acknowledge that other people do. not only does he write, but he does so about important and relevant topics, and from a point of view too often ignored by a l…

Compare Doctorow to somebody like Clay Shirky, as I did. The one essentially uses his popular "interesting links" blog to give his uninformed opinion on things. (It's not a completely awful opinion, but it's certainly uninformed.) The other does pretty extensive research, writes some fascinating pieces and writes them well, and, because he's not the editor of a pop blog, doesn't get nearly as much attention as Doctorow.

That's what bugs me. Doctorow is certainly a Paris Hilton: he does things for attention and he uses that attention to do things he couldn't do otherwise. That doesn't make him stupid (nor do I think Paris Hilton is particularly stupid, though she certainly plays the part): it just makes him somebody who doesn't deserve the box he gets.

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