This is only true if you go to a shitty school or don't apply yourself. There are some really good schools out there with exceptional programs in entrepreneurship.
Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
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Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#22Hey, I'm in the middle of an MBA program and think I'm doing just fine with my little start ups. Cute blanket statement though.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#23I like to think of this topic using an automotive racing analogy: Fortune 500 companies are the formula 1 cars. They need a great big team to perform efficiently, and minor tweaks applied correctly can yield significant results. The MBAs are the specialists who work the electronics and the advanced controls for the race cars. A team working on a formula 1 car could find a way to increase down force by 5%, or they cou…
This is one of the best descriptions I've heard about people who work at startups and MBA's who work inside large organizations. I don't understand why so many people in startups feel the need to rip on MBA's; its comparing apples to oranges.
>I don't understand why so many people in startups feel the need to rip on MBA's
It's because we've worked at startups where MBAs were brought in on the middle management layer and wasted our time polishing nuts and bolts in order to reduce drag when what we should have been doing was upgrading the suspension from a Watt's linkage to MacPherson struts.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#24I like to think of this topic using an automotive racing analogy: Fortune 500 companies are the formula 1 cars. They need a great big team to perform efficiently, and minor tweaks applied correctly can yield significant results. The MBAs are the specialists who work the electronics and the advanced controls for the race cars. A team working on a formula 1 car could find a way to increase down force by 5%, or they cou…
I question to value of MBA even for large companies. I see value in structured, methodical, analytical thinking for many classes of business problems (not all, many crucial business decisions involve creative guesswork!), but an MBA is way overkill, and whatever it is supposed to teach can be learned on the job. If a person cannot learn that on those skills on the job, I seriously would question his/her ability to be an effective manager.
Here is my real world evidence: German and Japanese large companies are as good or as bad as American ones (depending on your point of view). The MBA is relatively rare in Germany and Japan. Japanese large companies, in particular, tend to recruit fresh undergrads without much attention paid to their major, train them internally, and promote from within. The fact that their companies hold their own in global competition, indicates that the MBA doesn't add any superior competitiveness to American companies. In fact, I would argue the MBA actually subtracts from American competitiveness, but that argument would be more subtle, and would require industry-by-industry analysis of competitiveness. I will note in passing that software and internet industry is probably where the MBA influence is the weakest in America (primarily because of the extraordinary rate of start-up creation), and that sector is the one where America is the most globally competitive.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of the best descriptions I've heard about people who work at startups and MBA's who work inside large organizations. I don't understand why so many people in startups feel the need to rip on MBA's; its comparing apples to oranges.
>I don't understand why so many people in startups feel the need to rip on MBA's It's because we've worked at startups where MBAs were brought in on the middle management layer and wasted our time polishing nuts and bolts in order to reduce drag when what we should have been doing was upgrading the suspension from a Watt's linkage to MacPherson struts.
Not every MBA is lousy and incapable of seeing the forest for the trees, even though lots of startup techs think so.
Not every tech is lousy and incapable of understanding that IT needs to serve business needs, even though lots of MBAs think so.
Broad brush hatred of all MBAs is moronic.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#26I like to think of this topic using an automotive racing analogy: Fortune 500 companies are the formula 1 cars. They need a great big team to perform efficiently, and minor tweaks applied correctly can yield significant results. The MBAs are the specialists who work the electronics and the advanced controls for the race cars. A team working on a formula 1 car could find a way to increase down force by 5%, or they cou…
Your analogy works. Most hackers certainly don't belong in business school...but many hackers could benefit from an MBA's experience/education once their product has traction, users, whatever. An MBA as the first hire probably doesn't make sense. But an MBA to optimize sales/marketing/support might make a lot of sense... People tend to forget that top tier MBA grads are (usually) incredibly bright and productive prof…
> Most hackers certainly don't belong in business school...but many hackers could benefit from an MBA's experience/education once their product has traction, users, whatever.
I'm not convinced of this. Apart from the fact that your two sentences contradict each other, I don't believe this optimizes for the right variables. If you're a hacker, and you want to do a startup, you should be learning related skills - and the best way to do that isn't to attend an MBA course, it's to do a startup yourself.
And, besides, if you ever find yourself wanting of MBA skills in the future (which implies that your startup has some degree of success) you can always go out and hire one.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#27I think the point missed in here is that if you go into your MBA with a consulting, banking, etc direction, then you'll get all the lessons that go with that. If you did an MBA with the express purpose of concentrating on making startups work, you'd concentrate on taking away the parts of that education that focus on entrepreneurship. It's fashionable to diss the MBA but they contain a non-trivial amount of learning…
Agreed. An MBA is a strange animal. Two people coming out of the same school can have vastly different career goals, and have taken much different coursework. While the core courses may be the same, the real meat is often in the elective courses that allow you to focus on a specific area of business. A brand management person is going to exit business school with a much different skill-set than somebody who wants to do investment banking. The same goes for entrepreneurship.
Its not enough to point to an MBA and make generalizations about how it prepares you for X or Y. The devil is in the coursework, the professors, and most importantly, the student.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#28I am surprized. Where did the author get that MBA's are good at teaching entrepreneurship? Where does that expectation come from? I am have an MBA too and I was never told that MBAs are good at teaching entrepreneurship. Pick any blog and articles from real entrepreneurs and they'll confirm that you become one on the field, not in the books. I also disagree that MBAs make people suck up at startups. You may be talking about your personal experience, but it does not fit with mine. I am very happy to know what would have taken me 20 years to learn by myself. You don't need an MBA to become an entrepreneur, but it definitely helps...
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#29I like to think of this topic using an automotive racing analogy: Fortune 500 companies are the formula 1 cars. They need a great big team to perform efficiently, and minor tweaks applied correctly can yield significant results. The MBAs are the specialists who work the electronics and the advanced controls for the race cars. A team working on a formula 1 car could find a way to increase down force by 5%, or they cou…
I question to value of MBA even for large companies. I see value in structured, methodical, analytical thinking for many classes of business problems (not all, many crucial business decisions involve creative guesswork!), but an MBA is way overkill, and whatever it is supposed to teach can be learned on the job. If a person cannot learn that on those skills on the job, I seriously would question his/her ability to be…
Based on my own experience of MBAs I tend to agree with you. My company brought in a US name-brand management consulting firm to assist with a large M&A. One of the MBAs was assigned to help me write a transition plan for the integration of the IT systems my company would inherit. She correctly recognized that helping me was useless to her real purpose (inserting herself into my company at a high enough level that she could scout out new consulting opportunities) so she spent two months with us and delivered nothing. I wrote the transition plan on my own.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I don't understand why so many people in startups feel the need to rip on MBA's It's because we've worked at startups where MBAs were brought in on the middle management layer and wasted our time polishing nuts and bolts in order to reduce drag when what we should have been doing was upgrading the suspension from a Watt's linkage to MacPherson struts.
Not every MBA is lousy and incapable of seeing the forest for the trees, even though lots of startup techs think so. Not every tech is lousy and incapable of understanding that IT needs to serve business needs, even though lots of MBAs think so. Broad brush hatred of all MBAs is moronic.
It serves a useful purpose as a teaching tool for new initiates into the startup community. If they develop a phobia of MBAs, then they will know not to hire them into a brand new company without being very skeptical of that particular one's skills. If one checks out and is actually just a really good person for the job, sure, but on average, the stereotype is there for a reason.