Seth Godin provides a welcome criticism of the typical MBA program in NOBS, the end of the MBA. He reveals how little of the typical curriculum reflects the real problems a manager deals with, and the real skills they require. I agree with him that programs need to spend more time on meta skills: persuading, selling, teaching, hiring, firing, and inspiring. It’s valid criticism.
While we don’t get there 100%, though, I would argue that my program at Babson College gets closer than most other schools:
- Unlike traditional programs organized around a semester system, Babson eschews stand-alone courses for integrated, just in time knowledge delivery. Our first year is organized to follow the life-cycle of an archetypal corporation: evaluating the opportunity, assembling the team, developing the plan, securing funding, expanding operations, and becoming global. Subject matter such as finance, operations, and law are combined.
- Real-world experience is explicitly integrated. Every first-year student is required to complete a year-long consulting project for a local company. Many (if not most) second year students engage in unpaid, for-credit work projects: managing teams of undergrads, consulting for area businesses, managing the school’s endowment, or starting a business in the school’s incubator.
Babson is the entrepreneurship school. Most students don’t start their own companies but the focus throughout our two years is on identifying and realizing opportunities. For employers who primarily want someone to do valuations, or design marketing plans, of do cost accounting, we might not be the best choice. But for the sorts of businesspeople Seth Godin imagines, Babson could be just the right program.
