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:

  1. Warren Buffett: “business schools reward difficult, complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.”
  2. 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.”
  3. Larry Ellison: “Now that you have an M.B.A., you will never be as successful as me!”
  4. 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.”
  5. 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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