Rat Race, Entrepreneurship, and the MBA
by Sam Mishra, President, Franteractive
MBA = Master of Barely Anything
I believe a book was written on the above theme.
Now, let me digress...
When I was pursuing my MBA in MIT Sloan, the school made me sleep only 4 hrs a night on weekdays. I enjoyed the beating so much I
stayed on for 3 more semesters and got my MBA. I was born in India and have never seen the Taj Mahal. One of my best friends
(born somewhere here in USA) classmate made 2 trips, saw Taj Mahal the first time, and saw the Great Wall of China the second time around.
I need to see both...Some other class-mates made that trip to Lebanon while bombs were falling on Beirut, albeit that trip also included visits
to the pyramids in nearby Egypt.
Now let's come back from the globe-trotting... Can we look beyond the rat-race? Can we jump out of it? I have. You can check my podcasts
on FRANCONOMICS . My education in Economics (consolidated while pursuing the MBA
gives me the pleasure to go after the Bernanke's (and as required, the Krugmans) of the world. The fact that both these so-called giants
are MIT Ph.Ds. does not stop me from critiquing them. Think outside the box.
An MBA is not just an entrepreneur. And the so-called "entrepreneurship" is not the holy grail of human existence. Village women in India
who walk 12 hours a day under heavy sunlight, carrying twigs which they will sell the next day (while their husbands pull rickshaws or are
sleeping home having drunk a lot of country liquor), and who frequently don't get one full meal a day (and who never have had a hot bath
in their life), are also entrepreneurs. Everyone is not born with the endowment of Bill Gates or the connections of Mark "facebook"
Zuckerberg. But then there is a difference between this MBA and that MBA. My "tech strategy" podcasts which the CTOs / CEOs half my age i
n Boston/Bangalore/Bay Area lap up regularly from the Open Strategy Portal prove that an MBA from a good school (coupled with 20 years of experience) has some value...
So may be, just may be,
MBA = Master and Boss of Anything (one truly desires); and paying heavy tuition to a big business school is only one of the ways...
