The entrepreneurial skill-set

No, no, no…! Don’t get scared…. This post is not aimed at trying to convince you to become an entrepreneur, nor is it aimed at convincing you to choose entrepreneurship as your MBA major. I am neither and, having served and worked in very large organizations, I do play with the idea of going down that path one day, but it is definitely not my focus during the second year of my MBA program. Having said that, I do think that entrepreneurship has a lot to offer and that every MBA candidate or student should consider taking a least one class from this department (even if your school of choice doesn’t have a strong entrepreneurship department as the one at McCombs).

Many of us perceive entrepreneurs to be “different”. They are those people who can’t see themselves in any corporate environment and seek the strange notions of “career independence” and ”being their own boss”. Besides the fact that more and more business people choose to become entrepreneurs these days, I would like to suggest that entrepreneurship shouldn’t only be considered as an MBA major, a way of life or a career choice. I strongly feel that it can be treated as a set of skills that you can acquire and use in any business environment you’re in. Therefore, taking a dip into the entrepreneurship world, while breezing through your MBA program, can be beneficial, interesting and fun. The main reasons are:

• Entrepreneurship usually examines, analyzes and promotes a business as a complete system, including all of its components (marketing, finance, operations, strategy, etc.). Therefore, an entrepreneurship class will give you the opportunity to understand how the entire mechanism interacts and to get a better perspective of the role of your expertise in promoting your company’s strategic goals.

• If, for example, you’re a finance major who’s looking to diversify your classes but can’t take a concentrated marketing class (the core course was more than enough for you, right?!), an entrepreneurship class offers a good mix of the different aspects of a business, without concentrating only on one.

• More and more business professionals need to be able to evaluate businesses as part of their daily activities; among the many examples I can think about: money managers need to evaluate companies in order to choose the right stocks for their clients, individual investors do the same for their own portfolios, M&A experts need to evaluate potential acquisitions, marketers constantly evaluate competition, VC’s can’t move an inch without mastering the ability of breaking-down a business, etc. The ability to understand a business model, to figure-out its strengths and weaknesses and to be able to evaluate its potential is hardly entrepreneurship-exclusive.

• The criticality level of making the right decisions in an entrepreneurial setting is usually high. In large corporations a wrong decision usually end-up to be a lower slope on the company’s earning’s graph, a lower stock prices or a lost opportunity. For an entrepreneur, a wrong decision may well be the end of the business, no less. Therefore, entrepreneurs must develop critical-thinking skills and an acute ability to analyze the challenges they’re facing and call the right shots, time after time. To me, these are skills that I’d like to have wherever I end-up as a businessman: a small start-up, a corporate-development division of a global company, etc.

• More and more companies are realizing that in many markets it is not enough to hire smart people. Especially in today’s competitive markets (in which many of us will find ourselves, sooner rather than later), it is no longer enough to know the “trade”. One needs to think differently, creatively and synthesize large quantities of complex information and be able to derive the right conclusions….quickly. All of that is what happens in a good entrepreneurship class. Mastering these skills will help set you apart.

If you’re convinced you should, at least, take another look at the list of courses your entrepreneurship department, let me offer this additional advice: Choose a very hands-on, case based class. If possible, chose a class that enables you to work with real entrepreneurs. At McCombs, due to the entrepreneurial spirit of the city if Austin (which is somewhat similar to the one in Israel), and to the strong connection that exists with the university’s technology incubator, we are privileged to be able to do just that. MBA students team-up with real-world entrepreneurs and help them develop the business plan for their product. It is an exciting way to apply what you’re learning and challenge yourself to face dilemmas from different aspects of a business – not just the analysis of its DCF or its 4 P’s.

Having said all that about entrepreneurial skills, I do have some criticism to express. We all know by now that in order to make something popular and widely accepted, it helps a lot to have a catchy name… Google, Skype, Jajah, Youtube and many more have invested much time and money in order to come-up with a name that will easily roll on our tongues. How come, then, that this unique, smart and self-motivated people are still stuck with “Entrepreneurship”…?!!!! It is long, cumbersome and almost no-one can really spell it without the help of a speller. Therefore, I hereby urge the entrepreneurs of the world to gather some of their famous creativity and ingenuity and come-up with a better, catchier name. Any ideas?