wildchocolate

Before I begin, I would just like to say, I don’t in any way think that business school is useless for everyone. I certainly don’t think I know everything there is to know about business either. I simply don’t believe that business school is a pre-requisite, or even a useful background, for running a successful technology company.

There was a great article published in Business Insider back in July, written by an MBA no less, that had a few excellent points on this topic:

• The knowledge you need to run an innovative tech company does not come from an old case study, as fascinating as they may be.

MBA programs are focused on case studies. They teach people to follow frameworks, use known approaches, and walk down the career paths of those before them. The best innovators, however, are the ones that do not follow the rules of the past and have the spark to develop their own ideas.

• MBA programs are about strategizing, building a technology business is about executing.

In the real world of running a startup, the strategy and “analysis” is 10% of the work (some will argue that it’s 1%) and execution takes up the other 90% or more. It’s the action that counts at the end of the day. MBA programs have real business experiences tossed throughout them, but each class is ultimately a case in analysis. You look at business problems, think about how to solve them, identify key factors, and present your thoughts. You put together a presentation, a document, or a spreadsheet. But you never actually solve the issue.

These two points sum up a lot of my thoughts on why an MBA is not necessary. If you want to analyze business case studies and you are in technology, just take a look at the companies around you. Analyze what they did that worked and didn’t work. Or read the book Founders at Work, an excellent compilation of interviews with the most successful tech entrepreneurs of our time. But read the cases, pay attention, and then come up with your own ideas. Ultimately, you might borrow one or two ideas here and there from the community of smart people around you, but a lot of what makes technology companies a success comes from breaking the rules.

Case studies are interesting, especially if you like history, but I can’t remember the last time I solved a problem that I could have read about. Let me give you a few examples of issues or questions that have been posed to me in the last week:

• Where to purchase a Fidelity Bond for the company’s 401(k)
• How to fix a software crash that no one could re-produce
• The best way to prioritize a list of upcoming software features for development
• How to handle a specific customer issue
• A good name for a new company blog

None of theses issues required strategizing, theories, or referring to history. In fact, the majority of them involved on the spot problem solving and analytical thinking, something I learned in engineering school. Every situation is different and there’s simply no way that even if you found someone who had written about the exact issue you are experiencing at that moment, it would be guaranteed to work in your case. It might work, or it might be the wrong solution.

In my company we use a lot of team brainstorming on the spot to solve tricky problems and it works every time. Together, we come up with a better solution that is more in line with our company’s values and goals than any case or book could have provided us. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, technology is about constant problem solving. I’ve recently started describing software development as creative problem solving, because that’s really what it boils down to. I truly believe that the best way to solve a hard problem is to put a bunch of smart people together and brainstorm. Furthermore, the best way to build a successful technology product or services company, is to execute. Not to theorize.

Business school could never predict the crazy things that go on in the world of technology. However, it’s the backward seeking and theoretical/strategy focus that makes it in a lot of ways irrelevant. Innovation is all about new, original ideas and hard core creative problem solving. That’s what we’ve always done in technology, and it’s not something that they teach you in school.

Honestly, I don’t think any academic program can really keep up with this industry, and that includes the computer science and engineering programs. Academia is great, but to be successful in this technology world, you need to get your hands dirty to learn.