HOME

Does an MBA help you start your own business?

2009/09/01Career Issues


Can one learn to swim reading a book?

Can one learn to play a musical instrument without hands on?

Can one learn to ride a bicycle with the help of case studies?

One can learn swimming only with weeks of rigorous practice in water. It is merely impossible to learn a musical instrument without hands on. The only way to learn riding a bicycle is by riding it. You may fall down while riding for the first time, but you persist, until you learn it. The same principle applies to business as well, it needs hands on!

Business is not a recently invented technology. It existed since the birth of mankind. Primitive man used to trade with barter system, he did not have an MBA degree!

Trail Blazers do not need an MBA!
Co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page never had an MBA, they were PhD students in fact. Google does the best business in Internet Search market. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corporation, was a college dropout. Did he ever regret that an MBA degree would have helped him do business better? Microsoft is a pioneer and leader in Software business in the world. 20 more successful entrepreneurs who don’t have an MBA

I believe, the more you study, the better “qualified worker” you become. I don’t intend to offend people who don’t run their own businesses, but I attempt to contemptuously disagree with study-MBA-to-become-entrepreneur advocates.

MBA helps employees to do their jobs better, especially if they are working in the field of management, finance, sales or HR. An MBA degree may serve as a good credential to prove their businesses knowledge to their potential recruiters, thereby enhancing “employability”. It helps them learn an existing business process and does not help them to create one.

It is a different case when you already own a businesses. An MBA degree may actually help you to enhance your brand value as an individual, thereby improving confidence in your investors and could help you optimize and grow your businesses operations.

An MBA degree does more harm than gain if you are planning to launch a startup. MBA course overwhelms students with complex processes and myriad case studies of businesses across the world, which may actually intimidate a beginner trying to start on his own.

All you need is a vision and a business model
Business is all about creating a vision and turning it to reality. This process almost always involves risk and investment. It is sufficient if you have enough knowledge to understand a business model. A business model in simple words is a clear answer to the question, “How does this business fetch me money?”.

I am a full time blogger and as I understand, the business model of blogging is: Generate useful content which draws traffic to your blog, the more traffic your site gets, the more they click on your ads, the more you get paid.

Content -> Traffic -> Ads -> Revenue

Try to create a business model and dive headlong into business rather than take courses about it. All you need for running a successful business is a realistic business model and zeal to win, not an MBA degree!

About the Author:  Sridhar Jammalamadaka is the Editor of Interview Mantra. He's a typically non-typical Software Engineer from Pune, India. He likes entrepreneurship, web technologies and Micro Controller programming. He enjoys playing cricket and piano (but rarely does these activities). Through this website, he wishes to gather a large community of aspiring engineers, entrepreneurs and professionals from all parts of the globe. You can connect with him on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/sridhar.j

, or save it in your Delicious bookmark.


All comments of post - "Does an MBA help you start your own business?":

：Haha! I'am the first! Yeh~

Thank you!

Add a Comment / Trackback url

  1. #2  sridhar

    @Saurav,
    Thanks for your response.

    “It does matter where you are doing your MBA. Universities of the stature of MIT Sloan, Harvard, Standford, Instead does help you changing you outlook.”

    Don’t you think the tuition fees would be exuberantly high in such high stature colleges? Probably that money would serve a better purpose when invested on a good idea.

    A good network is certainly helpful. They can get you started with your business. But can they guarantee successful operation of your business?

    Is it a crime to commit mistakes? Don’t we learn our best lessons from mistakes.

    Techies like you and me, have learned programming languages by debugging our errors. Even a graduate masters degree in computer science may not help you from writing an erroneous Hello World program. Is it really that bad to write your Hello World program wrong and correct it yourself?

    MBA degree certainly helps to make you become a better personality. But I doubt if it can transform people into “successful” entrepreneurs. If that is the case, then mba would be kind of a shortcut to success. Don’t you believe there are no shortcuts to success.

    I believe there is no harm in losing, no harm in failing. It actually gives you opportunity to learn. Do you think that all the successful entrepreneurs existing today have started their successful business straight. There may be a few exceptionally lucky people who got success straight shot.

    I invite your thoughts on my argument.

    09/09/04 20:49

  2. #1  Sourav Ghosh

    You gave the example of 20 people who didn’t have MBA but still went ahead creating great business. I can give you countless examples who have been able to start their business after doing an MBA. Man!! It does matter where you are doing your MBA. Universities of the stature of MIT Sloan, Harvard, Standford, Instead does help you changing you outlook.They don’t teach you business. They make you practice it inside the campus. It’s always good to learn from others mistakes. Case studies does just that. When you start your business, you got to deal with marketing strategy, finance, Branding etc..and most importantly, you got to deal with people. Any one can start a business. Nothing great about that. The important point is to carry it a long way in order to generate more employment and contribute to the society. A person from the technical field may not have all the know-hows of business. But an MBA from a great university may help him gain some of the business knowledge in just a year or two. And the networking that you develop from being in a top b-school is unquestionable. A good network of people is always helpful. At the end it all boils down to the attitude of the individual, whether he considers an MBA as a course or he considers it as a training. You said, “One needs to have a vision”. Perfect!! But would you not appreciate if MBA helps you creating that vision in an earlier stage of your carrier? I think, though MBA is not mandatory for owning a business. But it’s advantageous to have an MBA, if you actually get a chance of doing it…It’s an insanely amazing experience in life. By no means it reduces your chances. Rather, it helps you to understand yourself much better. It helps you to identify those shades of grey n white. Not all can start a business, not many can run a business. Whether you actually need to start one?? Will that make you happy? What if, by the virtue of your hot blood, you happen to launch one business, invest a hefty amount and start crippling about it after a year?? MBA doesn’t answers above questions. But it definitely helps you finding answers to them….When you talk about MBA, the first thing that matters is your reasons of going for an MBA. If you want to start a business, you can definitely learn an ocean in your b-school. If you want to get a high paying job, MBA does help in that as well. Second, which b-school have you chosen….

    09/09/02 10:23

Show all Show 5 so far Close all

Comment begin from here or jump up!