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Most MBA programs seem to teach you how to run an existing business, versus how to create something people want. The first is much much easier than the first. A

Most MBA programs seem to teach you how to run an existing business, versus how to create something people want. The first is much much easier than the first. A cynical part of me wants to call it leeching off the hard work of those who came before them. Somebody already did the hard part of starting the business.

kasey_junk 13y ago
There is no quantifiable way you can say that running an existing business is easier than starting one. They may require different skill sets or have different challenges but claiming 1 is harder than the other is a particularly ignorant bias.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  "They may require different skill sets or have different challenges but claiming 1 is harder than the other is a particularly ignorant bias." I don't know; it seems like a position someone could conceivably support with evidence and analysis, but that certainly wasn't presented in the parent. In principle it could have been done by the parent and not presented - I leave it to others to make conclusions as to the likelihood of that.
  - kansface 13y ago
    Consider the failure rate of startups vs. those of established businesses.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      There are many ways of defining success vs. failure, there are many ways of defining difficulty, and there are very different barriers to entry.
mathattack 13y ago
It's a fair statement to say that most MBAs learn more about optimizing than creating. I'm not sure if it's fair to say which part is harder or easier. I've seen a lot of MBAs flame out in technology, but I also watched a cohort of Harvard MBAs in the mid-90s do a lot of great things in technology. In that case I think they were technologists at heart who got there just before the boom.