Entrepreneurship and MBA

The title of this post was the title of a Group Discussion that i attended at NITIE mumbai for admission into their PGDIM program. As always the discussion was all about people leveraging the knowledge that they gain while doing a Management course and later How it can be leveraged to start one's own business. Now when i have made it to a good B School, this question still haunts me. What is the reason that still most of the Entrepreneurs come from NON MBA background and on the other hand most of the MBAs dont take the Entrepreneurship way. Some of the reasons that i could think of are –
Entrepreneurship takes a lot of efforts from the professional as well as the personal front. Why anybody having a cool PGDM degree from a reputed college will take all these pains.
Gains are not certain. You join a company, you are assured to get a certain amount of salary. But as you start a venture, In the first few years, the probability is that you might not even make something out of it, leave alone the question of earning what you might have in a Job with a Hotshot company.
And many more….
But one more thing that I have observed after entering a B School could be one more reason why people from B Schools are generally reluctant to go for Entrepreneurship. It is their habit of “Always winning”. The profile of a typical B School graduate almost always has excellent academics into it (and now after the Prometric goof up of CAT2009, B Schools have given more weightage to the academics part). Result is that we have a class where everyone is university topper, Board topper or at least school topper (In worst case). When these people come together and appear in a test , it’s very interesting to see how people get frustrated after getting 0.25 marks below their neighbor (Not to mention that they don’t care about what they learn , forget about applying it). Can we expect such people to look beyond the horizon of 2-3 years and try to get the knowledge that would be helpful in the long run?

Shaping an Individual

Two days before, The course of STI(Social transformation in India) was over. Though getting a course over is something that everybody wants to celebrate, deep down inside i was thinking is it all that we expect out of the a Course. Attend the classes(attendance is mandatory for 80% else you will face a grade drop),do well in Quiz, Do well in exam and get a good grade. But suddenly i realized that it is only this course that made me ponder upon the essence of having a course and not other courses (After all at lease 3 of the courses are over). And then my mind recalled the Point of differentiation. How can i be such a fool. The difference is because of the faculty. Prof. Matthew can make anything interesting in his very articulate lectures coupled with some great movies from around the world. It was the first time that i really felt like watching a movie not just for entertainment but also to understand things which are going around. Many so-called controversial topics like Caste, Gender, Sexuality, Race etc. have been portrayed (and most importantly in the correct manner) in these movies which i have never heard of.
I still remember when we got our course outlines of various subjects, after looking at the name of the subject, the first thing that came in my mind was "its going to be boring","we might need to mug up a lot , after all it is sociology". But some seniors have assured me that the professor who is going to teach us this subject is so wonderful that even our way of looking at our life will change. And here i was waiting for the first lecture. And guess what , seniors were not wrong. In the first ever class, professor has made an impression on my mind which i can not ever forget in my life. Right from his criticism of every religion(for all the right reasons) to enlightening us about how we ourselves have changes over the years because of stereotyping to his always so great observations about films in different era's , Sir has made us really think about what we are up to as a society and where are we heading towards. But the most surprising part was film screenings. Having an elaborate introduction about the movie, the time in which it was made, the culture etc.(Not to forget his remark "I have to tell you because you people don't know anything") and then watching the movie was such an enjoying experience that i can bet even 100s of lectures couldn't have taught us anything of this sort. After the course is over, i am very sure i am going to miss all his great quotes as well as his scoldings "Abhijeet, on an average 5000 children in India are dying because of hunger and you are eating so much".
Very less people whom i come across in my life, could actually change my way of thinking , and Sir is one of them. it was really a great experience.I have already made up my mind to watch all his movies next year when he will come back for PGP15.
Now that's called Strategy .. Isn't it :)