What Should Be In An MBA For Entrepreneurs?

Scott Shane asks What Should MBA Programs Teach Aspiring Entrepreneurs? The university that he teaches at is currently redesigning the their MBA and Scott would like to see them add an entrepreneurship track that teaches students what entrepreneurs think that a person should learn in an MBA program. So he asks:

Should an entrepreneurship program teach the same things that are taught to students who want to go to work for someone else or should it teach something different? If the latter, what is that “something different”?

What areas are most important to focus on: accounting, finance, marketing, management, strategy, organizational behavior, information technology, operations management, or something else?

In each area, what are the most important courses to teach? And in those courses what topics should be covered?

To my mind the answer is simple, marketing. Sure there are lots of factors that matter when starting a business, but at the end of the day if the entrepreneur can not market and sell then I believe they are doomed to failure, no matter how good their business idea is, or how great the opportunity they are pursuing.

Those that have done an MBA, or looked at most of the syllabuses will no doubt point out that the MBA already includes a course (or even several courses) on marketing. The problem is these course are aimed at big businesses, typically the case studies focus on the likes of WalMart, Coca-Cola or Dell. Whereas an entrepreneur has different marketing challenges:

• Evaluating the market for their opportunity or idea.
• Selling their idea to family, friends, banks, business angels or venture capitalists to raise funds.
• Selling their idea to potential employees in order to get the best possible staff (without having to offer the best salaries).
• Getting business partners, suppliers and distributors signed up.
• Finding and winning the first customers.

All of which has to be done on a tight budget, perhaps even without a finished product to show them. There’s a balance however between including more practical courses and retaining broad scope of the learning. It is after all still an academic qualification rather than a professional or vocational qualification.

What do you think, is marketing the right answer? What else would you suggest they include?

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• 1

  I am an entrepreneur and also quite well educated. I have often thought that a good course to teach at business school would be something like “the history of failure”. By this I mean that case studies often look at successful businesses, but I believe that studying failure could also be instructive. It’s easy to find books written by entrepreneurs and managers about how successful they are, but I believe that understanding how and why projects fail is just as important.

  Stephen Davies on April 15th, 2008
• 2

  2 things: Discipline and Consistency. Discipline: It is a sad fact that too many businesses fail to grasp the essential fact that long term success comes from being master of the basics. The basics include: understanding the market you are serving – all the time; winning new clients – even when you are busy; over-delivering to all your clients; being in control of your finances (invoices, cash collection, VAT, bank account, profit etc). The post on mistakes to avoid when starting a consultancy covers some of this.
  Consistency – A lot of people try one thing once and do not get instant results, so they went on to the next (and the next and the next).

  Paul Fileman on April 15th, 2008
• 3

  Stephen,

  Good point, I’d like to read about some of the failures too. Boo Hoo is an interesting read for precisely that reason as it gives an insight into the failure of boo.com

  Paul,

  Valuable traits, but can they be taught on an MBA course?

  John on April 15th, 2008
• 4

  John,
  If they cannot be taught on an MBA course, then people like me will continue to earn a good living!!!

  Paul Fileman on April 15th, 2008
• 5

  True and from my experience few entrepreneurs are likely to pursue an MBA anyway.

  John on April 15th, 2008
• 6

  I agree with John. I’m of the belief that an MBA has little to offer an entrepreneur who is starting a business rather than becoming self-employed. If you are a self employed consultant then an MBA adds a lot of credibility, as people percieve someone with an MBA as intelligent and accomplished – But for someone starting a carboard box kiddy fort company from scratch tax planning and marketing stategies used by the world’s largest companies with near unlimited funds is somewhat irrelevant.

  Niquardo on April 25th, 2008