B-Schools Throttle Entrepreneurial Creativity | Opinion

Preface

B-schools throttle entrepreneurial creativity, and, in this article, I will propose my arguments in support of this opinion. I have worked in the industry at various leadership positions for over 25 years and have also founded many successful start-ups along the way. Besides, I have been teaching at many leading universities for the last twelve years as visiting faculty for management. My opinion is based on experience, both in the corporate world, and the management academia. Through this article, you can get a front-row perspective with me on this topic.

As we proceed, let us discuss the pedagogy being followed at most B-schools that, instead of creating business leaders, is producing only compliant employees, who have been trained to execute, not create.

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The Creativity Killers

B-schools throttle entrepreneurial creativity due to their outdated pedagogical approaches that are not only irrelevant, but also counterproductive!

Case Studies

B-schools use case studies to give perspective to their students on the functioning of the industry. The problem with case studies is that the examples of successes or failures cited in those case studies are contextual and there is no guarantee that the strategies that led to those successes or failures will be universally relevant. 

Take for example, all the strategies that Bill Gates must have used to create Microsoft were perfectly relevant at his time, but can Bill Gates create another Microsoft today with those same strategies?

One argument in favor of the case study pedagogy is that the case studies challenge the students to propose solutions to the problems presented therein. However, the students simply apply strategies and propose solutions that have been taught to them from their management books in the classroom only. No one actually tests the relevance and practicality of those solutions in the present context. The whole ecosystem is based on theoretical inputs and theoretical evaluation.

Tunnel Vision Culture

Another reason why I say that B-schools Throttle Entrepreneurial Creativity is because most of the subjects taught at B-schools are historical. They create tunnel vision in the students by forcing them to believe that the strategies of the successful past entrepreneurs are to be learnt and those of the failed ones are to watch out for. 

One example is Reva, a company that started manufacturing electric cars right here in India in the 1990s. No one had tried that before, and most of the business pundits rubbished the idea, why? Tunnel vision!! Nobody had tried that before and it did not fit in the convention of automobile design. Reva eventually did not do well and perished as there was no one to back the project. At that time, all automobile companies were fixated on producing cars that returned better fuel economy on fossil fuels and that was the key differentiator in the market. Fuel efficiency was a textbook strategy to remain differentiated and to succeed. Nobody wanted to look beyond that!

Someone with a creative mind, read Elon Musk, was convinced that the future of cars was with electric propulsion and decided not to get into the maddening race to build cars that were incrementally more fuel efficient than their competitors. Look what he created, Tesla!

Compliant Approach

Most B-schools train their students to comply and walk the road most taken. This definitely trains them to be good employees but not to become entrepreneurs. If that was the case, the students did not need to spend a fortune and the prime of their lives, learning business at a B-school. 

A simple graduate can also prove to be a compliant employee, doing exactly what he/she is told to do. Instead, students at a B-school must be trained to think laterally, create products and strategies, that are relevant to the current paradigms and create value for their businesses.

Risk Aversion

The intimidating fees and the overall expense structure of the B-school education around the world reduces the risk-taking ability of students. In addition, the glorification of the past students who did well, working for others putting their heads down, sets a benchmark for the new students to look forward to succeeding in their future employments just like their seniors. They cannot dare to take an alternative route, either because of the high financial stakes, or because of the high expectations from the society to succeed by creating a mediocre life (read stable) for themselves.

Placement Oriented Approach

Unfortunately, B-schools have become placement factories. Students are lured to take admissions by highlighting the placement statistics of the previous years. Once a student joins a B-school, the focus is on landing a good placement. All the stakeholders work only on that goal. The student will obviously then everything with that purpose only and nothing else. Academic achievements form a large chunk of this approach. There is nothing wrong in securing academic achievements, but the problem is that the academics themselves are flawed and not relevant to the changing paradigms.

Desktop Research

Someone in the past must have correctly thought that business management studies should be research-oriented to give the students the hands-on experience and the fresh perspective that they so deserve. That kept aside, research has become like any other mandatory subject, and to my astonishment, the entire research is conducted and presented without ever stepping out of the classroom!! It has become one of the checkboxes towards successfully graduating from the school. Instead, research should be driven by curiosity and hunger to understand concepts in the business environment.

Lack of Industry Exposed Faculty

This is another dark area of business management education ecosystem. I have come across faculty who have never stepped out into the industry, except their own internships and they are teaching subjects like sales, marketing, operations etc. Imagine a flight instructor who has never flown a plane himself and acquired all his credentials on a flight simulator, teaching trainee pilots how to fly a plane. 

Would you ever want to be on that plane being piloted by one such pilot? Or a doctor teaching surgery to students, without having conducted one single surgery himself? In a B-school, the scope of learning in a classroom should not go beyond 25 percent and the rest should come from practical experience, outside the classroom.

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Conclusion

Management education, over the years, has fallen through the crack. It has metamorphosed into just another academic course with very little emphasis on entrepreneurship. In fact, an MBA program should be designed more like a training program than an academic course. There should be experimentation, incubation of ideas, and pilot projects. Management courses need to be practical oriented and there should be labs for each specialization where students can conceive, create, and test business models. 

An MBA program should no longer be a university qualification, an industry certification, managed by the industry itself. 

If medical colleges are attached to live hospitals and flight schools operate at airports, they why can’t the management schools be located in companies?