Rob at BusinessPundit recently asked “Who needs an MBA?” based on an article by the NY Times that refers to The Economist saying:

There is a rising reaction against management theory, according to The Economist. A new book by the management expert Gary Hamel, “The Future of Management,” notes that several well-known executives of hot companies - among them, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google and John P. Mackey of Whole Foods Market - did not go to business school.

Which is a rather weak argument on the part of The Economist, as the evidence they present is taken out of context and doesn’t support their conclusion. It just so happens that I’m currently reviewing Hamel’s book and it seems to me that he’s arguing that businesses need to understand management theory and using their understanding of the theory to create new innovative approaches to management. The quote itself actually comes from a section on Google in which he explains how they’ve used an innovative approach to management to create a competitive advantage. What Hamel actually suggests is that:

When you go to business school, you get a lot of wisdom, but you get a lot of dogma, too.

On the other hand, anyone can learn how to challenge conventional wisdom, and I’ll show you how in the next chapter. For now, it’s enough to note that management innovators should take a lot of advice from people who’ve never learned what they’re not supposed to do. My own experience suggests that the people with the boldest and most useful ideas about how to reinvent your company’s core management process are probably not the folks who are managing those processes right now.

You could argue that Hamel’s advice is not new, indeed business consultants and business consultancy practices exist precisely to provide this external review and development of management processes.

I believe that as an entrepreneur or innovator an MBA can provide you with the wisdom that Hamel talks about, but you need to maintain the entrepreneurial zest and keep questioning convention theory, processes and attitudes, if you do that then an MBA adds value, but you don’t need one.

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