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WHAT YOU SAY

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Several months ago, I happened to watch a show on TV about the unlikeliest people who somehow managed to become financially succesful in life. One thing that striked me the most was a story of this little girl. I think she was only 12. I can't remember exactly.

She saw her parents cook strips of bacon in microwave every morning and noticed that there was always a lot of grease on the plate that people hated. So she came up with an idea of a product that she called a "bacon hanger". It was basically a piece of plastic to hang the bacon in the microwave so the grease would actually drip down to the plate attached to it and it would leave the bacon crispier and less fattening.

With the help of her father (I think he invested $5000), she began selling these bacon hangers to stores. By the end of the year, she had sold several million dollars(!!!!) worth of bacon hangers (I forget the exact figures, but I'm certain it's in the millions)

I graduated cum laude in business (with a B.S.). What she did with that bacon hanger blew my mind. Why? Because everything she did totally contradicted everything I had learned from business school, and yet she still succeeded.

If someone in my business class had come up with this bacon hanger idea, I can guarantee you that everybody would have laughed so hard at it. According to the business school mantra, to have a potential of success, a new product must have at least a "sustainable advantage" over its potential competitors. This can be a form of patent, copyright, technological breakthrough, lowest cost, government sanctioned monopoly, extra large investment, high learning curve in production, strong marketing muscle, or other significant barriers of entry. (You probably notice that this is the same list as what venture capitalists usually want from a new product.)

Did that bacon hanger have a patent? Nope. Was it a technological breakthrough? Nope. Was it produced in lowest cost? Not sure, but everyone else could've made a cheaper imitation. Did it have a government sanctioned monopoly? Yeah, right! How about an extra large investment to start with that no one else could've afforded? Nope. High learning curve in production that takes competitors years to learn? Yeah right--what's so hard about making a piece of plastic to hang bacon? Strong marketing budget? I don't think so. It wasn't even a "sexy" product that would generate a lot of "Wows".

So why was it a big success???

I always enjoyed looking at the list of the (self-made) wealthiest people, but it always bothered me that almost every one of them had never gone to business school. What's the logic here? Aren't the people with a business degree supposed to be the "experts" of creating a succesful enterprise? Where are they? I've seen almost none of them in the list. Those without business degrees seemed doing better. The guy who started Wendy's Hamburger chain never finished high school!!!!

I did my further research. I've found that business schools (or many other schools) force people to be conformists that conform to the rules. These schools kill your creativity. They kill people's dreams!! They teach people to be afraid, very afraid, to take a risk--a necessary step to grow. A friend of mine, who has an MBA from Columbia, is just a classic example. He won't start a business unless he can get some kind of "sustainable advantage guarantee" for his product. He's so afraid of falling that he won't climb the mountain unless it is flat! Today he's still sitting at home doing nothing, and wondering why nothing good happening in his life despite his prestigious degree.

Another study shows that if you have a Ph.D, it's better that you don't try to start a business, because your chance of failure is higher. Hmm....it makes so much sense now, doesn't it? Afterall, many successful companies were started by college dropouts, not high-flying Ph.Ds.

I'm not trying to discourage people from getting an MBA. It's really up to what they want in life and how they define success. Many people find an MBA a valuable asset, especially if they have an undergraduate degree other than business. It's good for the career, they say. If it works for them and makes them happy, why not?

To me, however, success is not about building a career, even with the most prestigious firm in the world, I would still be an employee. Success, to me, is about entrepreneurship. Success is about taking a risk. It's about breaking the (business) rules. Success is about making different kinds of bacon hangers.

Until today I have never regretted the fact that I didn't go for an MBA. I'm starting my own business. Yes, sometimes it's hard. I often miss the convenience of having a secretary, stability, a paycheck that comes every other week, paid insurance, gossip about our bosses, etc. But you know what? This business is mine!!! I'm building it from the ground up! And I'm so proud of it!! Every weekend I always look forward to my Mondays, something that never happened to me when I worked for someone else!! And I'm also trying to undue a lot of things that I learned from my business classes and use my own thinking, instead. And I learn about my competitors. I like it when their CEOs have an MBA, because I know the way they think. It's all written in the textbooks!!! What gets me the most is if the CEOs are truly self-made, non-MBA entrepreneurs, especially those with a hard life in the past. These people would do anything unthinkable, even move a mountain, to succeed.

This is a quote from Calvin Coolidge that I like:

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educational derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

Good luck!

Entrepreneurship has its reward Wednesday, July 03, 2002 at 19:53:48 (PDT)

LSD,

College is only there to learn stuff good for coffee clatching. For all pratical purposes unless you move on into acedemia the knowledge is basically nonfunctional at the college level.

I think the real importance of college is the learning process; in obtaining information and interpretatiing information.
AC Dropout Wednesday, July 03, 2002 at 12:17:27 (PDT)

Annapolis-Harvard Law Grad,

Your view of the Big 5 is now 10 years old. Just go look up the stock of PWC and Accenture. In their corporate overview they call themselves consulting companies.

Companies who request proposals for strategic/management consulting will get proposals from BIG 5, AC, Mckinsey, BCG, etc.

Companies that request proposals for IT consulting will get proposals from Big 5, AC, but not Mckinsey.

Maybe in 1987 when AC was started it took 8 years. But by the mid 90's it was 11, then 13. But that was the carrot in those companies. It 1987 AC has 1087 partners and 5,000 employees. By 1996 it had 1200 partners and 40,000 employee. The joke in the company was that you need to kill your mentoring partner to get partnership. I have no idea what the career tracks look like now, once AC went public.

AC Dropout Wednesday, July 03, 2002 at 10:19:49 (PDT)

Consultant,

www.businessweek.com had an article on Mckinsey on 7/02/02 about the current failures (i.e. Enron, incubators, overhiring) and how their business is capped at around 3 billion dollars with about 7,000 employees.

I'm just suggesting that if I was a client and Accenture told me they had 11 billion dollars and 30,000 employee. Not only suggest a strategic solution and be 100% responsible for implementation in technology and cultural change....
Well I would think long and hard about both proposals on my desk.

Like I said I view the situation from a clients point of view, not an employees point of view.

PS - Mckinsey partners have been going to Accenture for last 8 years, because Accenture pay their partners more. The current stock options have also been a great incentive for partners in other firms to come into Accenture.
AC Dropout Wednesday, July 03, 2002 at 10:08:49 (PDT)

Chinese American,

First off let us not confuse rich with climbing the corporate ladder. Most of the richest people I know of, in terms of cash, don't have a college degree or only a BA.

This is due to the fact that making money is relatively easy concept and pretty easy to implement.

As I keep mentioning in terms of cost/benefit and a function of time, an MBA quite easily achieved for people who needed to work full time.

PhD, MS, JD take more time to achieve and not instantly marketable in the workforce, without prior experience.
AC Dropout Wednesday, July 03, 2002 at 09:56:32 (PDT)

AC Cluess:

You original statements were that it is impossible to advance in corporate america without a MBA. I merely pointed out that there is no such things as impossible by referring to the likes of Dell, Gates, Ellison, or even Wang, etc. I merely said that a MBA is useless because you don't need it for anything; it is just not a requirement for any job out there. You can rise to the same level with or without a MBA. On the other hand, there are jobs out there that require a JD or PhD. Taking the bar, in most states, requires a JD. Being a tenure tracked professor, in most real colleges (not the city college you attended) requires a PhD. Hence, my statement is still true. There things you can't do without a JD or PhD, hence they are useful; an MBA is not because it is not a requirement to anything. By contrast, a BA/BS is useful because there are job that or degrees that require you to have a BA/BS first.

Your statement is just plain false because you have no experience other than what you have heard from your cousins. You insistence on referring to consulting firms as Big5 is just ignorance. Big5 is used to refer to the accounting firms; they just happen to have consulting arms now. We got sidetracked because you kept making this fundamental error and used the accounting firms to support your proposition that a MBA is useful. Little did you know that business school MBA programs don't produce accountants; accounting departments of business schools do. Hence, you assertion that it takes a MBA to make make partner at a Big 5 is also false.

Finally, it never took 13 years to make partner. You're up or out within 10 years, if not 8. Again, get your facts straight before you shoot your mouth off.
Annapolis-Harvard Law Grad Tuesday, July 02, 2002 at 18:49:37 (PDT)

"Mckinsey is basically just the strategy division of Accenture at this point. Whether or not Accenture will displace Mckinsey as strategy consultant of choice is a whole other matter."

Doubt, since Accentute is considered second tier for top business school grads and people try to lateral from Accenture into McKinsey, not the other way around.

You believe what you will, but just ask anyone in the consulting industry who is in the know. They will tell you that Accenture isn't the first choice, places like McKinsey or BCG are.

Consultant Tuesday, July 02, 2002 at 18:37:15 (PDT)

AC,

"Look it is very easy to statisfy this argument. If we look up all the CEO in Fortune 500 companies, you will see a vast number are holders of an MBA."

I think this is true, but more than half of the CEOs of these companies hold Liberal Arts undergraduate degrees. I think some of them do not have a MBA but only a funky BA degree which serves no immediate purpose.

I always believed the Liberal Arts were an important core to a college education. It teaches you to learn and to be open minded. You may not earn much with a Liberal Arts degree in the beginning but you can surpass someone with a hardcore business degree if you are motivated to do so. Why? Liberal Arts train you to appreciate the learning aspect of any endeavor.

I once read a piece of writing by Bruce Lee. He said without the Liberal Arts in his education (he majored in Philosophy), he could not have been a skilled martial artist. Everyone knows Bruce Lee was more than a skilled fighter, he was remarkable.
LSD Tuesday, July 02, 2002 at 14:28:00 (PDT)

AC Dropout,

If you look at Fortune's list of 40 richest Americans under 40, very few if none have an MBA. In fact on the 2001 list only 1 had an MBA.

An MBA is expensive as hell and an MBA doesn't get you into any doors that a Phd, JD and M.S. cannot help you get into.

Chinese American Tuesday, July 02, 2002 at 11:55:11 (PDT)

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