The Road to Entrepreneurship...

This is one of those questions that I have heard asked in so many different ways by all sorts of people. I think the phrase “…getting a MBA…” is the catch all phrase for education, training, and mentoring as it relates to entrepreneurship. My answer to this question is contingent on the understanding that when people refer to getting a MBA, they are including the formal education method that involves actually getting an MBA, and the informal methods such as mentoring programs. For the purposes of this discussion, I am making these assumptions on the phrase above as it relates to entrepreneurship.

I do find it interesting that the spread of the answers to this question always seems to be the same - people with formal education on entrepreneurship tend to answer YES while those without the formal education tend to answer NO. I am not exactly sure why there is such a divide in opinion but I think one reason could be the bias that is brought upon by ignorance, bigotry, jealously, or just a mere lack of understanding by either sets of people.

Anyway, my answer to this question is YES - Getting a MBA does you make a better entrepreneur. That is, if you learn about entrepreneurship either through formal schooling, vocational training, or through a mentor, I believe that you will be a better entrepreneur.

I am currently in the MBA program at DePaul with a concentration in Entrepreneurship.

Here are some of the reasons why I think so.

First of all, I strongly believe that getting trained in any profession (Yes, entrepreneurship is a profession) will make you better at that profession. Going through a MBA program focused on entrepreneurship is equivalent to getting trained in the entrepreneurship profession. Such a program will introduce you to the basic skills of entrepreneurship - developing ideas through market analysis, business planning and delivery, implementing change and growth strategies along with presenting you a great opportunity to network and meet incredible people with the same goals as you.

There are, of course, those who are blessed with natural talent and obtain success without getting any formal training like that of an MBA program. Such individuals however tend to be one out of a million. In the entrepreneurship profession such smart, naturally gifted individuals such as Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google) had not gone through any formal training on entrepreneurship at the time of launching their start-ups. They just had a great will, incredibly innovative ideas, and obviously good enough business sense that they ended up creating a large and successful company. While I understand that it is ok to admire such individuals, I think it is unwise to not get formal training and education because of these one-off cases.

Apart from just getting the general training, I have found that most experienced entrepreneurs will agree that for any start-up to be successful, the founders must be well versed (or have resources) in Marketing, Management, and Finance. These three subjects are part of the core program in any MBA program. Having a good understanding of these three subjects lowers the risk that the founders bring to a start-up. As I have said before, the biggest risk to any start-up is you, the founder. So anything that you can do to lower this risk should make you a much better entrepreneur.

Finally, I think that it just makes sense to fully understand the profession of being an entrepreneur and learn all you can about it before entering the profession, getting a MBA is a good way of doing so. I hope that one of the things that you take away from this post is that - if you have the opportunity to further your learning on entrepreneurship, do so! Your chances of success will increase.