MBAs are Overrated
If you have been reading Innovation Zen for a while you probably know that I am skeptical about the value of MBAs (for the matter of fact I am also skeptical about the whole traditional education system, but that is for another article…).
Last week I came across an interesting article titled “Proof MBAs are overrated, by 20 people who are smarter and richer than your professors.” The article lists 20 very successful entrepreneurs and managers that do not consider MBAs good investment. Here are the first 5:
- Warren Buffett: “business schools reward difficult, complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.”
- Guy Kawasaki: “I don’t think an M.B.A. matters very much for starting a company. A much better educational background is an engineering degree. You can always hire MBAs, but if you don’t have the ability to conceptualize and deliver a product, you’ve got nothing.”
- Larry Ellison: “Now that you have an M.B.A., you will never be as successful as me!”
- Henry Mintzberg: “The M.B.A. trains the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences. Using the classroom to help develop people already practicing management is a fine idea, but pretending to create managers out of people who have never managed is a sham.”
- Ross Perot: “When I go to the Harvard Business School, I talk to them about the real world. At business schools they live and think in terms of organizational charts. But life is a spiderweb; everything crosses at odd angles.”
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[…] At business schools they live and think in terms of organizational charts. But life is a spiderweb; everything crosses at odd angles. Ross Perot (via Innovation Zen) […]
Amen to that!
[…] Do You Really Need College Education? Sometime ago we have already stated that MBAs are overrated. Guess what, today it is time to criticize college education! […]
I think that an MBA has a lot of value, but it doesn’t magically turn you into something you’re not.
A lot of people seem to believe it will make them into a top level manager, or a business guru. The reality is it will help you to develop analytical skills and will give you a grounding into the theories of management.
The theories themselves are precisely that theories I’ve yet to find an organisation that fits perfectly with any one theory but many use a combination of them.
I’d have to disagree with Guy Kawasaki in particular. You can always hire engineers too, the right person to start a business could be either an MBA or engineer or neither. What makes them right is their vision and drive.
[…] I’ve recently come across a numbers of posts discussing the value of an MBA today. Innovation Zen suggests MBAs are overrated saying: […]