Why few MBA succeed in creating great business?

Of course, I'm not conducting a serious research on this topic, and no statistics presented here.

Blind trials make miracle

When we discuss the difference in creating new business between people with and without MBA, the first question should be, of course, which factor decide the success?

When we read the history of the business (same in other areas), we can find that although most successful people have their special advantages, there are still much more people with same advantage lost in the meanwhile who are not reported to public. It is frustrating but undeniable that the chance plays great, if not major, role in creating new business.

Thus, when we evaluate the impact of MBA education on creating new business, we should compare both the number of people who try to create new business and the percentage of success.

Firstly, I suppose the MBA education may reduce the attraction of creating new business by indicating the risk and complexity of it. With business education like MBA, you'll clearly know how complicated the business is. The strategy, the organization, the marketing, the finance...., there are tons of work to do if you are setting up a startup by yourself, and you have to integrate all these complicated things together! So, more business education you get, more possible that you're scared by the complexity of business, and you'll be more reluctant to take the risk of starting your own business.

On the contrary, the people without much business education won't feel so much worry from analysis, they just feel the enthusiasm and can't help themselves trying.

Therefore, I believe it is the power of probability that massive mount of blind trials lead to success; but at first, you must start to try. The real question for the MBAs is: would you really like to try even if you know the great possibility of loss ahead of time?

Managing for others vs. Chasing own dreams

From the first day in business school, we are taught to manage for others, if you're a middle level manager, you are trying to contribute for high level goals (big picture); if you're a CEO, you're just an agent for shareholders; and your first responsibility is to take care of interest of OTHERS!

As an entrepreneur, however, you're fighting for your own dreams. The firm and the product are another of yourself!

The most significant difference between these two attitude is that there are totally different mindsets about goals and the limitation of the business:

• As a manager, the interest of capital is the goal and other issues such as innovation and product are just limitation to conquer.
• As an entrepreneur, the business dream such as setting up a great product is the goal and other issues are just limitations, for instance, a problem of financing.

It is the current age that calls for the fanaticism of entrepreneur. Only with such a passion can we blow out all the disturbances from other and stick to our own dream which requires to think without boundary of the "traditional wisdom". Creating the unique and distinctive business itself is creating history rather than repeating it.

Unfortunately, the MBAs are bent to the managers perspective and the negative impact of it partly (if not totally) offsets MBAs' advantage of business knowledge over non-MBAs.

Conclusion

The claim that the business knowledge from MBA is useless has no concrete evidence and sound reasoning. The fact that most great entrepreneurs are not MBA can easily introduce the survival bias which wrongly compare the number of success with and without MBA and ignore the base of the people who tried to create new business with and without MBA. The fact is that less MBAs would take the great risk, not the MBAs are more likely to fail.

The real loss of the MBA education is the implicit emphasize on the manager's mindsets while ignoring the spirit of entrepreneurship which is vital today for even the managerial positions.