While some entrepreneurs still insist that the best degrees are earned from the school of hard knocks, more and more budding magnates are gaining inspiration and advantage from MBA programs and other forms of formal business training.
True entrepreneurs are a different breed from the rest of society. They are imaginative, creative, optimistic, focused, resilient, driven to succeed and electrified by both the thrill of building something from nothing and the spoils of success. It’s fair to say that these character traits are innate, so the question arises: can entrepreneurialism be taught?
The answer: entrepreneurs are born, but successful entrepreneurs continually hone their knowledge and skills in order to effectively pursue their goals. To succeed as an entrepreneur, you need more than a concept, a broad smile and a loan from wealthy parents.
Master of Business Administration (MBA) courses have traditionally attracted conventional middle-tier managers, from large companies, whose ambition is to breathe the rarefied corporate air of uppermanagement on a daily basis. While for many this is still the case, a growing number of innovators and entrepreneurs are finding value in formal postgraduate business and entrepreneurship training.
“For too long, business schools have been training functionaries. What we need now is to train people who are innovators, too,” says Dr Simon Avenell, Head of Murdoch Business School in Western Australia.
“Many people who view themselves as entrepreneurs believe that the best training is going out and starting a business. I strongly disagree,” says Avenell. “Entrepreneurs need a raft of skills in addition to creativity. They can save themselves a lot of time and trouble if they know something about financing processes, law and business management in general.”
This is where the value of formal business and entrepreneurship training resides. You can’t teach a student how to come up with the next great idea for a company, any more than you can teach them how to write a great novel. What can be taught are the skills required to support inspiration, in a critical, controlled environment where it is safe to try something new, take risks and make mistakes. The corporate world affords no such leeway.
Sharyn Roberts is Director of Award Programs at the Australian Graduate School of Management (University of NSW). The AGSM focuses on providing students with a general management qualification that is relevant both in the corporate world and to starting their own venture.
“Understanding how to protect intellectual property, how to prospect markets, how to structure your business, manage change and finances — these are all lessons that can be learnt and give you the confidence to avoid making unnecessary mistakes,” says Roberts.
INSIDE OUT
Brett Clark is an MBA poster boy. A pharmacy graduate in the late eighties, he founded ePharmacy in 2000 with two colleagues. The remarkable success of the company saw him named the 2003 Ernst and Young, Young Entrepreneur of the Year for QLD and NT. Following a recent merger, the company now employs over 350 staff and has an annual turnover in excess of $100 million. In July 2005, Clark graduated from an MBA at the University of Queensland.
Clark embodies the new wave of self-starting entrepreneurs who undertake formal study to enhance their entrepreneurial success.
“What I’m finding is that there is a tendency in business to want to make the quick buck,” says Clarke. “In reality you have to be prepared to do the hard work.”
He used his MBA to provide a framework for analysing each respective division of his business.
“The problem with entrepreneurship is that it has connotations of money and true entrepreneurs, or the ones I know of or have read about, don’t always make money,” says Clark. “An entrepreneur is really someone who makes things happen. If you have a good business model and you do something very well, you’ll make money anyway.”
Typically, MBA courses focus the mind and allow students to address the previously veiled gaps in their business knowledge. But, just as importantly, MBAs also give students an authoritative glimpse of their strengths. An elite classroom is a great place to assess your abilities.
FAST GROWTH
The fastest growing business courses in the country are aimed squarely at entrepreneurs. Virtually every major higher educational institution offers a course specific to entrepreneurship, or, at the very least, units with an entrepreneurial flavour.
One of the leading entrepreneurship courses, a Master in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (MEI), is offered by Swinburne University of Technology. Professor David Hayward is Dean of Swinburne’s Faculty of Business and Enterprise, and Director of the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship.
“Many of our MEI students enrol having already started companies. Many of them have started several companies. Virtually all of them are selected because they have a background that reflects a practical commitment to entrepreneurship,” says Hayward. “That’s where their heart is. They like to suck the lecturers’ minds dry so they can get back out to making money. They are extremely focused people with a clear sense of where they are going. They have a very strong emotional attachment to being an entrepreneur.”
Several years ago, such courses would have been unsustainable. But the value of entrepreneurial education has become more broadly accepted. Budding entrepreneurs are seeking formal guidance and mentoring that is more practical and specific to their area of interest, geared directly toward starting and growing companies.
The needs of a middle-level management consultant looking to get ahead are very different from the needs of someone who is itching to launch, say, a technology start-up, and that is becoming reflected in the growing number of educational options available.
“Our MEI students are inclined to be very outgoing, team spirited, and usually have a very strong identity with this course in which they have enrolled, because it refl ects the future in entrepreneurship,” says Hayward. “It’s very important to them to to be associated with like-minded individuals, where their values are understood and nurtured.”
GOING IT ALONE, TOGETER
Networking has always been one of the great benefits of postgraduate business education. Many students find their future business partners studying an MBAs, and stories abound of little black books that get filled over the duration of the course with contacts who endure as fertile business associates for life.
Graduates participating in alumni associations affiliated with the University of Adelaide, the University of Melbourne, the Australian Graduate School of Management, the University of Western Australia, Queensland University of Technology, the University of Queensland, Monash University, Bond University and many others gain constant nourishment and opportunity from such fraternity.
Sharyn Roberts sees alumni as one of the greatest benefits of studying at the AGSM. “We teach students about entrepreneurship and strategy, innovation and new product development. Graduates take what they have learnt and take it in new directions. They love to share what they know and how it can help others. The wonderful thing about alumni is, that it works both ways.”
EARLY START
For entrepreneurs who hear their calling early, undergraduate courses are also a viable option. Colin Dunn is Course Co-ordinator of the Bachelor of Business (Entrepreneurship) Program at RMIT.
“This program is unique in the world. There is no other undergraduate program that has this kind of intensive entrepreneurial teaching. The business is the context for your learning. When you work on, say, a marketing plan, it is the marketing plan for your business. At the end of your three years, you end up with a degree and a business.”
Dunn characterises the undergraduate RMIT program as entrepreneurial immersion. It’s like training wheels for young entrepreneurs in a hurry. Students are freely granted leave because the demands of running a growing business are seen as an indication of the programs success. He does, however, note the extended completion times as being an inevitable repercussion.
“There is a growing acceptance in society that entrepreneurship has definite principles and structure, like, say, management. People realise that things like feasibility studies, opportunity identification, business and marketing plans are of value, for everyone.”
With 97 percent of Australian businesses falling into the category of ‘small business’, Victoria University has developed the Bachelor of Business (Small Business and Entrepreneurship), which will begin in 2006. Recognising the growing demand for specific training targeted directly at prospective start-up entrepreneurs, the course is designed to prepare students to operate their nascent venture.
“This course is designed to equip students to deal with the challenges of operating their own business, including intense local and international competition, dealing with technology and financial management,” says Professor John Breen, Victoria University’s Deputy Dean, Faculty of Business and Law and Head of the Small Business Research Unit.
The new course services a commercial set of people who have traditionally been all too willing to kick off their commercial dream lacking a well rounded understanding of what is required.
With so many educational options available to entrepreneurs eager to make their mark on the world, there is no excuse for leaping straight into the unforgiving marketplace unprepared. Australia’s MBAs and specialised entrepreneurship programs offer a safe harbour where creative ideas flourish and valuable business advice on offer. When considering the various full-time, part-time or executive program options, ask yourself this question: have you learnt the lesson to never stop learning?
