5 Entrepreneurship Skills You’ll Get from an MBA

The most common reasons people choose to pursue an MBA is for a career switch or as a steppingstone to a managerial role. MBA candidates have the opportunity to acquire a multitude of skills that are applicable to a variety of industry and managerial positions.

One of the less pursued career paths is that of an entrepreneur. There is a widespread belief that you do not need a master’s degree to be an entrepreneur. Stories of Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates who dropped out of Harvard are constantly used as examples to amplify this point.

However, it is worth realizing that these individuals got into arguably the world’s leading Ivy League school with an acceptance rate of less than 10%. This shows two things:

1. They are high caliber individuals who possessed the qualities required to gain admission to a top college
2. The school environment helped them develop networks that played a key role in launching their enterprises

For every Bill Gates who makes it without graduating, there are hundreds of others who start a successful business post-MBA. A few key examples include:

• Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, has an MBA from Wharton
• Michael Bloomberg, co-founder of Bloomberg L.P., has an MBA from Harvard
• Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, has an MBA from Stanford
• Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has an MBA from Stanford
• Frank Batten, co-founder of The Weather Channel, had an MBA from Harvard

Many people object to the idea of obtaining an MBA degree with the end goal of pursuing entrepreneurship.

In this article, I want to talk about 5 key entrepreneurship qualities that an MBA fosters.

1. Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable

During an MBA you are constantly pushed to get outside your comfort zone. One-third of your final grade is based on class participation, so one must speak up in class. Alumni engagements and roundtables happen bi-weekly. Informational interviews become second nature to the point that rejection no longer leaves a mark on you. MBA students are continuously exposed to these uncomfortable situations to the point that they becomes the status quo, and so high performance under pressure becomes easier to sustain.

2. Developing negotiating skills

Entering the entrepreneurship route one cannot avoid negotiations. You must negotiate daily with vendors, clients, landlords, and employees.

Being familiar with ideas like target and resistance points, anchoring, and BATNA (Best Alternative to the Negotiated Agreement) will help you to enter negotiations prepared. These are not complicated concepts. However, they provide a framework that will allow you to approach negotiations with confidence, which is a key component in having a successful negotiation.

3. Building a global network

The biggest asset you take away from an MBA is the network. The majority of the MBA programs will cover similar business cases. The key difference between the top 50 MBA programs and the rest is access to a first class network and the opportunities that flow from that. That is why MIT Slone, Harvard, and Stanford draw such a high number of applicants.

Your network is your net worth. When opening a new business, your network plays a critical role in being able to attract team members, find clients, and spread the word about your new initiative. All of these elements play a huge role in scaling up the business and getting in front of the right VCs.

4. Appreciating the importance of ethics and reputation

As Warren Buffet famously said “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

Employees are more likely to remember the one time you criticized their work rather than the ten times you praised it. The same goes for vendors, clients, and everyone else who interacts with your business.

The most valuable asset of a business is not its products, cash in the bank, computers, or proprietary data, but its reputation.

Through analyzing case studies and taking the ethics classes during the MBA, one gets to see the value of building a reputable company and acting ethically. Keeping these in mind plays an important role in ensuring the longevity and success of a start-up.

5. Sharpening your hard business skills

An MBA also allows you to sharpen your hard skills in areas such as finances, operations, strategy, planning, supply-chain management, and legal. These skills will obviously play an important role in your journey to become a successful entrepreneur.

Final thoughts

In an environment of elite faculty and high achieving peers, an MBA can offer a unique opportunity to learn how to remain calm, professional, and productive even in a state of uncomfortableness, to negotiate confidently, utilize a global network, safeguard your reputation by avoiding unethical business practices, and to master the hard business skills that every entrepreneur needs.

Tringa Krasniqi holds an MBA degree from The George Washington University. She is the founder and consultant at Ivy Journey, an educational consulting firm for gaining admission to universities and winning scholarships.

Image: Unsplash

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