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Why Entrepreneurship Can Never Be Taught In B-Schools

I though of writing this article after being shocked by the level of Entrepreneurship learning MBA colleges are providing. It is ridiculous that a person who has never been an entrepreneur teaches how to become a successful entrepreneur and how to start and run an enterprise. Since I have tasted entrepreneurship with whatever little I have been doing, I can tell you confidently that entrepreneurship can never be taught.

I am tired of attending lectures that have been constantly teaching me how to sell a shampoo, how to sell a soap, how to make advertisements and all that useless stuff that I am never going to do in my life. Every marketing professor teaches marketing of FMCG products as if they have nothing else to talk about. They take same example of Shampoo, soap, car, food items, coca-cola, pepsi etc. and keep repeating same stories again and again. No professor has ever taught me how to sell a machine to pharma manufacturer, how to sell a financial product to a client and how to sell a software to a financial consultancy firm. That makes me feel that I am at wrong place learning unnecessary stuff.

Everything that I learn in my MBA is unrealistic, useless and repetitive stuff. Nobody teaches me how to make an Elevator Pitch, how to prepare a project to raise money, how to talk to a VC, how to attract an angel investor etc. Is it that difficult and complicated for professors to teach?

I know it is not that easy and cheesy as it seems in books and in stories. It is difficult and complicated but also thrilling and fascinating at the same time.



Why starting a business is complicated?

Well it’s not. Starting a business is not complicated. Deciding which business to start and gathering courage to start is what makes it difficult and complicated.  Is my decision right or wrong, will I succeed or not, if not, what will happen, if yes, what next? Real life gives entrepreneurs the ability to make these decisions.

Entrepreneurs are not made by universities. They are made of environment and experiences. To be a successful entrepreneur, you need passion, zest, burning desire, greed, hunger for innovation and dedication. These things you don’t learn at college or universities. This is purely my opinion derived out of personal experience and many examples which I have witnessed in my life.

These are certain lessons of entrepreneurship that an MBA program can never teach you.

1. Aggression and Spark

To become a successful and innovative entrepreneur, you need aggression. A lame person can not innovate as innovation needs your brain running two steps ahead than the world. You need futuristic vision. You need to analyze what people need, and what can I create that reinforces inherent need of customers.

There is always a gap between what is needed and what is available, a smart entrepreneur bridges this gap.

To do something that changes the game, you got to be crazy. “The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the one who really do” – Steve Jobs. His story is as fascinating as an action movie. He dropped out in first semester only to do what he loved to do. He dropped his engineering classes and started attending typography lectures which used to fascinate him. He started assembling computers in his father’s garage and started a company. He acquired an order to supply 50 PCs knowing that he doesn’t have resources to fulfill that order. But he was confident enough that he would find a way and he did. That successful completion  of first order motivated him to establish a company.  That is what aggression is.

2. How to Pitch

Most of the Universities will never teach you how to pitch for capital. They will teach you how to present yourself in an interview, but will never teach, “How to present a business plan.”

One of the reason we are not taught pitching is because professors themselves don’t know it. It is even difficult to imagine a fresh MBA giving elevator pitch where he has to explain entire idea in a few minutes.

3. Fake It Before You Make It

In business, it is necessary to make a big picture out of a small concept. You have to market your business wherever and whenever possible. You need to talk about your business before it actually comes into existence. You need to fake it before you make it. Colleges and universities will never teach you this art. It comes from experience.

4. Innovation

Well, this is purely based on what I have experienced in my MBA. A guy named Mark Zuckerberg in Harvard created fantastic thing called Facebook. Simultaneously, he kills the competition for next 5-10 years by attracting millions of youngsters spending their productive time on Facebook. And universities will ask you to create a project wherein you need to upload a picture on FB or create a page and get maximum likes to win. CRAP !!

Indirectly, we are killing innovation.

5. Negotiation

No professor in my life has ever taught me how to negotiate. An illiterate shopkeeper is better than me when it comes to negotiation. We are still in Kotler’s book and selling shampoos and soaps in classrooms. We talk about ADVERTISEMENTS and their effectiveness in a close classroom with 70 people where professors keep uttering jargons and students think they are learning something. Again CRAP !!

6. To Follow Your Heart

Most of  the times, I was not allowed to follow my heart in my School. Same is the case with my college. In every school or college, there are certain protocols which students have to follow, but what if I have something different than those protocols? No, You can not have anything else than what rules say. Your voice is not even noticed sometimes. So, you have to negotiate with your heart and follow the rules.

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once you grow up.”
– Pablo Picasso

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15 Comments

  1. Hi Jay,

    Good point and a nice article explaining why entrepreneurship is not thaught in the so-called ‘b-schools’. The fundamental reason is that MBA courses prepare you for a job/profession in the industry, not about starting a business, launching your company/project, etc.

    It was good to learn from american books to get a global insight from people like Philip Kotler, C.K.Prahalad, etc. But none of it is relevant because most MBAs ultimately either end up in a bank’s operations desk or sell credit card or do selling/marketing for a technology or retail company. Even if we keep Entrepreneurship aside, the education does not prepare students even for these realities of life. Academic content talks about so many stuff like strategies, senior leadership, etc which are good for knowledge, but a student must learn more about executing tasks, projects and activities which he/she will work on in the next 3-5 years after graduation. 

  2. Thanks Shridhar,

    As you rightly mentioned, we’ve been taught stuff which we are not going to undertake in near future. We can do better, all we need is REALISTIC STUFF !!

  3. Its Awesome post, an eyeopener for all upcoming mbas.

  4. I dont know about MBA preaching to make one an entrepreneur or not

    But what I learnt from my MBA was 

    – there is no substitute to hard work(earlier office used to make me tired, now I can stretch myself to max continuosly without cribbing)

    – time management 

    – balancing professional and personal life 

    – how to be a better person 

    – it developed a thinking capability and gave me a different perspective 

    I agree not many tools which are taught in the MBA classroom are ever used. But I don’t remember using what I was taught in my engineering days on the job either. 

    My final take is MBA only helps you understand and perceive things differently and makes you a better person altoghether . Cant vouch for others. 

  5. Hi Jay,

    The article made me remember the best prof. in my MBA class. He use to say “Studying MBA is 50% learning management jargon which you may use where ever required so that other will think that you are an intelligent stuff. Another 50% is networking, as your colleagues will move to senior positions, you will help each other in moving up the ladder.”

    There isn’t an iota of bookish knowledge which you may use practically because life doesn’t move according to books. And this I have learned in my last 1 year of Entrepreneurship period. 

  6. I wont discount MBA course as a whole. One has to just take it as a starting point for your career. In India we follow a traditional path of life where it starts with education, career and then marriage/responsibilities, etc. Its practically difficult to start working after graduation (bachelors degree) and then come back to education for a masters (MBA, MCA, Mtech, etc). Taking a break is not an easy decision. So invariably most students want to get done with their higher studies as soon as possible because later they may not have the time or energy to come back to school. So in this case an MBA only serves as a launch pad or as a passport, but you need to prove yourself in your work, projects, skills, etc.

  7. I wont agree on everything. Yet at some points you do sound right.

    First starting with the course.

    The place where I did my MBA from had a full dedicated course on negotiations and it specifically dealt with negotiating at all levels, including the auto wallahs.Ditto for elevator pitch.

    The entrepreneurship courses we had were directly from the horse’s mouth with prominent entrepreneurs who had tasted the failures and then the successes. We had business plans as well VC understanding from Chennai angels VC group. By the end of my MBA we had an amazing subject on sales and distribution strategy wherein we had the book of ” What the customer really wants by Ram Charan.”

    And yes specifically in this course we read about selling machines, selling financial products and many other varied things apart from the regular stuff.

    See an MBA cannot teach you everything but then it is a first step and that too a very powerful one.And I always wanted to discuss this particular point with Alok as well but never got the opportunity. We cannot and should not completely demean a thing until we hear both sides of the story.

    But what I agree with you the most is about ” aggression and passion”.

    No school ever can teach you that. We also have to remember that an MBA class does not contain like minded people. It is a mixed bag. Neither is it only for entrepreneurs and not also alone for the managers. There is a thin line that the course itself treads.

    The idea behind an MBA is not to become an entrepreneur alone. 

    By this statement I cannot reduce the importance of entrepreneurs as I too very much want to be one in days to come.

    People have different motives as well. MBA is undoubtedly the strongest network builder. By the end of a strong MBA course I know that I have connected with people who can help me with my way forward when I would be stuck in my entrepreneurship.MBA would give you atleast a flavour of things which otherwise would take a long time to be amassed while in the industry. It is just one baby step.

    Personally I think that the problem is to actually grow up. Cause a person who has actually grown up knows that only the child inside will keep him alive. (Just thought to sound philosophical but again fell flat).

    ~Harsha

  8. Thanks Govind 🙂

  9. Hello Piyush,

    As you rightly mentioned MBA teaches you Hardwork, but smartwork is really needed at times, and when it’s really needed we tend to follow the guidelines(SWOT, SLEPT, Porter and stuff.) taught in MBA and we lose out on opportunities. Ask entrepreneurs if they have done SWOT or any other thing before starting, they don’t waste time, they just start. We MBA’s fail there. It limits your horizon of looking at things. Of course it enhances you as a person but we are talking entrepreneurship here.

    Thanks 🙂

  10. Hello Shriharsha,

    If you have had all the things you mentioned above in your MBA, that’s really brilliant. It is really an exception. I’ve worked as a counselor and have interacted with many MBAs, even from premium B-Schools, and I can derive from the discussions I’ve had with them that, We can do better !!

    I am not demeaning MBA completely, the point I am trying to make is that we can do better. If most of the B-schools follow the pattern you had in your MBA, it really can change the game. Most of the students & professors coming to B-schools have one aim “Placement”. Students come to finally get placed and profs come to push them forward. But again as you said, It’s a mixed bag, not everyone wants to become an entrepreneur. 

    They’ll deliver what you demand, and most of the candidates demand “Placement”. The mindset has to change. MBA is not a tool to get you a placement, it’s an institute. I loved this line of yours “The problem is to actually grow up”.

    Thanks 🙂

  11. Hi Jay,

    Nice Article. Points well made.

  12. It goes same for Engineering.
    It says “Its not University who make an Engineer (They produces BE Graduates), Its Industry who makes them Engineer.” 
    (There are few exceptions like me. but figure will not be even more then 0.1%).

  13. Very well said!

  14. Worth a read Jay… thanks a ton 🙂

  15. Hi Jay, I have written this is response to your post and similar other MBA bashing posts.

    https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/who-taught-you-how-to-propose-to-your-prospective-girlfriend

    Regards

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