4 ms·

"An MBA from a good university is HARD and enlightening work." Could you elucidate what is "HARD" ? I am NOT being sarcastic. I am genuinely curious, but I've

"An MBA from a good university is HARD and enlightening work." Could you elucidate what is "HARD" ? I am NOT being sarcastic. I am genuinely curious, but I've found MBA coursework , (except in advanced finance) to be relatively easy compared to, say, a compilers class. Running a real marketing campaign could be hard (depending on the context) but what is hard about the MBA course work in marketing? Could you give couple of examples of what was hard about your MBA so we can understand better? (repeat, I am NOT being sarcastic or mocking you)

carbon8 18y ago
Well, first of all, what's hard for one person can be easy for the next. Plus, people have a lot of misconceptions about many business related fields. Take marketing, for example. It is often misinterpreted as purely "promotion" when really it also encompasses product development, pricing and placement. For me, product development and placement come naturally while I find branding to be tremendously difficult, certainly more difficult than any technical challenge I've ever faced. What one person finds "easy" or "hard" is dependent on a lot of factors, including personality type, skills, what sector that person is operating in, etc. For one product or service, pricing may be extremely simple while in another it might require significant market analysis. Also, whether a person finds something "hard" or not doesn't directly relate to its value. I wouldn't find it "hard" to spend hours reading case studies, but they are tremendously valuable since you can learn from other companies' successes and failures and apply them to your own company. On the other hand, someone might find advanced corporate finance "hard," but unless he or she wants to work in a job in which it would apply, it's largely useless for that person. FWIW, I'm not in an MBA program, but I do the web business thing while my wife is in a top-tier MBA program and is an exec in the financial industry. She has an analytical background but prefers strategy and operations. I know one of the things she finds both challenging and valuable is being exposed to fields that are outside of her interests but are important for having a well-rounded view of how businesses and marketplaces function. In bad business conditions this is especially valuable since you can't just stumble and guess your way around like you can when money flows easily.
- plinkplonk 18y ago
  "first of all, what's hard for one person can be easy for the next. " no doubt but the question was explicitly what part of the coursework was hard, not the actual practice of business, which we all acknowledge is very hard. "Also, whether a person finds something "hard" or not doesn't directly relate to its value. I wouldn't find it "hard" to spend hours reading case studies, but they are tremendously valuable since you can learn from other companies' successes and failures and apply them to your own company." I didn't claim any of that. The question was solely about a statement in the original post and asking for examples in order to understand the point made, because in my experience MBA coursework is an order of magnitude easier than a masters in say Physics. My experience is not necessarily universal of course. I don't believe an MBA is useless, but I am not so sure what quantum of value it does have. Hence the question.
  - carbon8 18y ago
    what part of the coursework was hard, not the actual practice of business An MBA is practicing business, at least at the top tier schools (possibly at the others, I don't know). Most of the focus is on case studies and group projects tackling real business issues, usually from real businesses, sometimes simulating what you would do and sometimes actually dealing with the actual company. Group projects in part time programs are frequently based on things actually occurring at a business one of the group members works at or runs, while in full time programs students will work with companies on existing issues. Traditional coursework is more commonly found in the the strictly analytical finance and economics classes.
    - plinkplonk 18y ago
      "An MBA is practicing business," This is the first time I've ever heard an mba as practice (vs a study of theory) in running a business. Great insight (if true). "Most of the focus is on case studies" A case study is not quite practice, more like a review I'd think. If this concept is adopted , analysing Napoleon's campaigns would be "practicing war" , reading about Bruce Lee's fighting style(and even debating about it) would be "practicing KUng Fu" and an analysis of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would be "practicing music". " and group projects tackling real business issues," This is more like it. What percentage of an MBA do you think would involve running (parts of) a real business? 25 %, 50 %? "This past quarter, for instance, her group in one class did all the business planning for a group member's business that he is now creating." Well, this will become a "real business" when it is actually running? I mean, till it runs this planning is as good as anyone else's? "In other cases, they've done restructuring plans that are then implemented by the company. " This is more in line with "practicing business". Thanks for the input. Thought provoking.
lanceweatherby 18y ago
Here is a real example. Pretend like you are in a finance class. It's a case study. On Microsoft buying Yahoo! Determine how much Microsoft should be willing to pay for Yahoo! and the assumptions and rationale behind your conclusion. Or how much is AOL worth as a spinout of Time Warner. The core of the answer lies in something called the Capital Asset Pricing Model and it is as every bit as complex as the fixed point combinator for which YC was named. A little more practical and more marketing aligned, doing real market research for a natural foods store to determine if they should expand their footprint to other locations or just increase the size of their current store. It took over a month to design the questionnaire before the prof deemed it acceptable. With that said, the real challenge, and what any top school does, is teach students how to prioritize. They give you so much work that you can not possibly get it all complete at the level of excellence in which you want to operate so you have to learn when something is good enough and move on to the next pressing issue. Which, BTW, is pretty much what you need to do in a startup as well.
- plinkplonk 18y ago
  "The core of the answer lies in something called the Capital Asset Pricing Model and it is as every bit as complex as the fixed point combinator for which YC was named." Well I don't think the y combinator is a particularly complex concept and I did accept finance as hard and explicitly asked for non finance examples, :-) but that said I see your point (upvoted!). "doing real market research for a natural foods store to determine if they should expand their footprint to other locations or just increase the size of their current store. It took over a month to design the questionnaire before the prof deemed it acceptable." If I understand this correctly, the coursework is hard to the degree it intersects running a real business (in this case, as you said, doing " real market research for a natural foods store". "With that said, the real challenge, and what any top school does, is teach students how to prioritize." yes, but this is hardly unique to an MBA :-)
  - lanceweatherby 18y ago
    The challenge is prioritization. The uniqueness of an MBA is that it teaches how to think strategically about a business. While I can not articulate exactly 'what' it teaches, I do know that often times in the face of new circumstances and rapidly changing conditions it has enabled me to ask the right questions and create the right framework to make a decision. What I love about startups is they require this type of thinking. It has helped me tremendously in scaling technology companies.

carbon8 18y ago

Well, first of all, what's hard for one person can be easy for the next. Plus, people have a lot of misconceptions about many business related fields. Take marketing, for example. It is often misinterpreted as purely "promotion" when really it also encompasses product development, pricing and placement. For me, product development and placement come naturally while I find branding to be tremendously difficult, certainly more difficult than any technical challenge I've ever faced. What one person finds "easy" or "hard" is dependent on a lot of factors, including personality type, skills, what sector that person is operating in, etc. For one product or service, pricing may be extremely simple while in another it might require significant market analysis. Also, whether a person finds something "hard" or not doesn't directly relate to its value. I wouldn't find it "hard" to spend hours reading case studies, but they are tremendously valuable since you can learn from other companies' successes and failures and apply them to your own company. On the other hand, someone might find advanced corporate finance "hard," but unless he or she wants to work in a job in which it would apply, it's largely useless for that person. FWIW, I'm not in an MBA program, but I do the web business thing while my wife is in a top-tier MBA program and is an exec in the financial industry. She has an analytical background but prefers strategy and operations. I know one of the things she finds both challenging and valuable is being exposed to fields that are outside of her interests but are important for having a well-rounded view of how businesses and marketplaces function. In bad business conditions this is especially valuable since you can't just stumble and guess your way around like you can when money flows easily.

plinkplonk 18y ago
"first of all, what's hard for one person can be easy for the next. " no doubt but the question was explicitly what part of the coursework was hard, not the actual practice of business, which we all acknowledge is very hard. "Also, whether a person finds something "hard" or not doesn't directly relate to its value. I wouldn't find it "hard" to spend hours reading case studies, but they are tremendously valuable since you can learn from other companies' successes and failures and apply them to your own company." I didn't claim any of that. The question was solely about a statement in the original post and asking for examples in order to understand the point made, because in my experience MBA coursework is an order of magnitude easier than a masters in say Physics. My experience is not necessarily universal of course. I don't believe an MBA is useless, but I am not so sure what quantum of value it does have. Hence the question.
- carbon8 18y ago
  what part of the coursework was hard, not the actual practice of business An MBA is practicing business, at least at the top tier schools (possibly at the others, I don't know). Most of the focus is on case studies and group projects tackling real business issues, usually from real businesses, sometimes simulating what you would do and sometimes actually dealing with the actual company. Group projects in part time programs are frequently based on things actually occurring at a business one of the group members works at or runs, while in full time programs students will work with companies on existing issues. Traditional coursework is more commonly found in the the strictly analytical finance and economics classes.
  - plinkplonk 18y ago
    "An MBA is practicing business," This is the first time I've ever heard an mba as practice (vs a study of theory) in running a business. Great insight (if true). "Most of the focus is on case studies" A case study is not quite practice, more like a review I'd think. If this concept is adopted , analysing Napoleon's campaigns would be "practicing war" , reading about Bruce Lee's fighting style(and even debating about it) would be "practicing KUng Fu" and an analysis of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would be "practicing music". " and group projects tackling real business issues," This is more like it. What percentage of an MBA do you think would involve running (parts of) a real business? 25 %, 50 %? "This past quarter, for instance, her group in one class did all the business planning for a group member's business that he is now creating." Well, this will become a "real business" when it is actually running? I mean, till it runs this planning is as good as anyone else's? "In other cases, they've done restructuring plans that are then implemented by the company. " This is more in line with "practicing business". Thanks for the input. Thought provoking.

lanceweatherby 18y ago

Here is a real example. Pretend like you are in a finance class. It's a case study. On Microsoft buying Yahoo! Determine how much Microsoft should be willing to pay for Yahoo! and the assumptions and rationale behind your conclusion. Or how much is AOL worth as a spinout of Time Warner. The core of the answer lies in something called the Capital Asset Pricing Model and it is as every bit as complex as the fixed point combinator for which YC was named. A little more practical and more marketing aligned, doing real market research for a natural foods store to determine if they should expand their footprint to other locations or just increase the size of their current store. It took over a month to design the questionnaire before the prof deemed it acceptable. With that said, the real challenge, and what any top school does, is teach students how to prioritize. They give you so much work that you can not possibly get it all complete at the level of excellence in which you want to operate so you have to learn when something is good enough and move on to the next pressing issue. Which, BTW, is pretty much what you need to do in a startup as well.

plinkplonk 18y ago
"The core of the answer lies in something called the Capital Asset Pricing Model and it is as every bit as complex as the fixed point combinator for which YC was named." Well I don't think the y combinator is a particularly complex concept and I did accept finance as hard and explicitly asked for non finance examples, :-) but that said I see your point (upvoted!). "doing real market research for a natural foods store to determine if they should expand their footprint to other locations or just increase the size of their current store. It took over a month to design the questionnaire before the prof deemed it acceptable." If I understand this correctly, the coursework is hard to the degree it intersects running a real business (in this case, as you said, doing " real market research for a natural foods store". "With that said, the real challenge, and what any top school does, is teach students how to prioritize." yes, but this is hardly unique to an MBA :-)
- lanceweatherby 18y ago
  The challenge is prioritization. The uniqueness of an MBA is that it teaches how to think strategically about a business. While I can not articulate exactly 'what' it teaches, I do know that often times in the face of new circumstances and rapidly changing conditions it has enabled me to ask the right questions and create the right framework to make a decision. What I love about startups is they require this type of thinking. It has helped me tremendously in scaling technology companies.