A Specialized MBA in Entrepreneurship: A Case Study

MBA students focus on entrepreneurship more than almost any other specialization.

Entrepreneurship is now the second most popular MBA specialization, behind only international management. James Donald finds out how students are taught to set up businesses from scratch and manage them through the first few make-or-break years.

The top business schools, which specialize in entrepreneurship, insist they are not in the business of trying to sculpt something out of nothing; however they can help budding entrepreneurs along the way to business success, and at least provide skills that will help graduates in a corporate career.

"Our entrepreneurship portfolio includes courses focussed on every element of the entrepreneurial life cycle," says Professor John Mullins, Associate Professor at London Business School.

"We cannot - nor would we want to - turn just anyone into an entrepreneur. What we can do is to provide networks, tools, frameworks, and mindsets to help our graduates succeed along the always challenging entrepreneurial path.

"We teach our students the critical skills to run their own businesses and arm them with a knowledge base to help them. However, I am a firm believer that these are just strong business skills and will be just as valuable to large corporations," says Emily Cieri, Director of the Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs (WEP) at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

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MBA graduates will then be armed with the skills large corporations are on the lookout for. Fred Wainwright, Executive Director of the Centre of Private Equity and Entrepreneurship at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, says:

"Companies of all sizes are looking for ways to accomplish more with fewer resources.

"MBA graduates who think about strategic innovation and understand how to manage with constraints, how to leverage their teams’ efforts, and how to mitigate risks have a greater probability of receiving promotions to senior management."

Olga Molina, part of the MBA recruitment team at British American Tobacco Russia, agrees: "In many cases, you need people who are ready to take bigger challenges and to work on start-up type of project, like opening new markets and exploring new product niches.

"I believe that having tasted the entrepreneurship spirit at the MBA course, this opens wider opportunities for its students than it is traditionally thought."

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Entrepreneurial MBA programs: support to start up a business

Wharton runs several competitions, including one for those students who a traditional internship over the summer break would not be relevant for developing their career. Instead, they are given $10,000USD to start up and build a business.

"This legitimizes the work they are doing, and we give them as much support as possible, including access to mentors, but we don't take any equity stake. Competition is very fierce," says Cieri.

IE Business School also help their students set up their own business: "Each of the teams developing business plans in the Venture Lab, compete through a number of rounds of internal competition for a slot at the Venture Day.

“The finalists are given the opportunity to pitch their plans to a panel of Venture capitalists and investors, with the winners receiving start up capital and investment," says Michael Aldous, Associate Director of International Communications.

"Alongside this there are other initiatives such as ICEVED, the International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Venture Development, a group of 25 top Business Schools that offers a global link to business schools, entrepreneurs, investors, and information."

IE have calculated that around 25 per cent of their graduates go on to start their own business, or play some part within a start-up venture during their career. Karl Purkarthofer, founder of BlynkOrganic, credits his MBA from IE in 2005 as invaluable:

"The MBA certainly helped me to develop the ideas I was forming with regard to setting up my own business. People may think that it's not necessary for entrepreneurs, and to some extent there really is no better way than to learn by your own experience.

However, the degree gave me a framework for thinking through the planning and development of the business plan. More important, I met my business partners and many other marvellous people."