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Overrated MBA Degrees

Entrepreneur?
Entrepreneur?

This past Sunday in the comments section, we heard a few perspectives on the value of the MBA – Masters of Business Administration. Personally, MBA degrees are a dime a dozen, and mostly overrated.

Count on your hand five people who have been transformed by their MBA.

Not saying that people don’t benefit from getting their MBA.  There’s no question that the enormous effort and expense changes the MBA graduate.

And perhaps there’s a place, a rite of passage so to speak, to follow an undergraduate degree with a Master’s degree when we are in our early 20’s and at the very front end of our career..

But what I’m saying right here, right now, that in later life, people have to admit a certain truth.

The truth is, you must ask some seriously honest questions:

  1. Why is an MBA critical to me now?
  2. What’s my payoff, my ROI?
  3. Will this catapult my career, and why?
  4. Or will it simply pad my resume?
  5. Is there a smarter way to increase my rank and salary?

Please don’t misunderstand, everyone knows that an MBA graduate has conquered what few others have. All I’m saying is this, does it catapult you?

And if it doesn’t, then why expend the energy, effort, time, and money?

So, back to where we started, at the end of three years, will you have a profitable business?

Now that seems like a great payoff, a huge ROI – like being shot out of a cannon.  Or am I missing something?

50 Innovation Tips

Creative Or Innovative?
Creative Or Innovative?

What we need is more creativity.  Right?

Rubbish!  Creativity is for amateurs.

We don’t need more creativity, we need more innovation. Creativity is for amateurs.

Innovation is for champions.

Anyone can think of ideas.  But it takes world-class effort to implement a creative idea so that it becomes useful in making things better than before.

Where should you start?  Begin here with Idea Champions, 50 ways to foster a culture of innovation.

PS.  These are simply 50 great ideas, which mean nothing if we can’t execute them.

Published

Apple The Most Trusted?

Apple's iPhone Doubled Sales

This Fortune article places Apple at the top of it’s list for the Most Trusted Company.

There’s a reason people either love Apple or don’t love Apple.

It’s as simple as the difference between night and day.

Apple illuminates the risky, undiscovered breakthroughs.

Microsoft illuminates the slow and steady, status quo.

Just like there are people who use the treadmill and train for the local 5k race.

And just like those that challenge the odds and the obstacles, for their Country’s Olympic Trials.

We need both, but only the risk-takers get their photo on the cereal box.

MBAs should be pass or fail

Pass Or Fail
Pass Or Fail

Ever have so much to say that you don’t know where to start?

Sitting here, fingers on the laptop keyboard, I’m hard pressed to find the right place to begin.

And as someone who has worked professionally for 36 years, been to hell and back (twice), overcome addiction, overcome (an invisible) disability, constantly struggles with health challenges, and generally has the weight of the world on my shoulders, inspiration for today’s post should come easy.

But it’s not.

Maybe Sundays would be better off as a “day of rest”.

If that would prove valuable, I’d like rant about MBA degrees. In searching for an MBA program that would suit my ADD, high achieving, aggressively unfancy, professionally antagonistic, uncommonly insightful, intuitive, and overall impatient personality – this may prove helpful in annoying people enough to change.

MBA degrees should be pass or fail, and require a three year commitment.

At the end of your studies, if you do not have a profitable business, you fail.

However, if your tax return, for your entrepreneurial business, has turned a profit, you pass.

And a few moments ago, it seemed as if today’s post wasn’t going to happen.

It’s good  to disagree, and I respect you if you do (and most of you do). It’s also good to measure usefulness. Try taking your MBA degree to the Bank.  See how much they’ll give you for it.