What are the best b-schools for entrepreneurship?

I often hear a lot about the finance and investment side of top b-schools. Which ones rank the highest for entrepreneurship? Are these the colleges that rank highly in leadership and management?

 
Best Response

@"DickFuld" and @"ArcherVice"

The times are a changin'. Entrepreneur != brilliant inventor working tirelessly in the basement or prodigy college dropout coding for 4 days straight. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are the exception not the rule.

In the last 10 years, MBA programs have developed robust experiential entrepreneurship programs taught by clinical professors who lived through the dot-com years. Just like with consulting or banking, these programs provide unparalleled access to the upper echelons of the industry. They are magnets for start-up recruiting, angel investors, venture funding, and access to world-class accelerators and incubators. There are also the hubs for research studying what factors truly separate successful new ventures from the rest.

@"Some1ToKnow"

The schools that are the "best" for entrepreneurship have the right combination of exposure, funding, critical mass of interested students, experience, faculty, and commitment to focusing on new ventures. IMO, Stanford, HBS, MIT, Booth, Wharton, and Haas are tops. FWIW, Olin-Babson has been ranked #1 by USNews almost every year they've published such a ranking, but I know nothing about it.

 
brj:

@DickFuld and @ArcherVice

The times are a changin'. Entrepreneur != brilliant inventor working tirelessly in the basement or prodigy college dropout coding for 4 days straight. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are the exception not the rule.

In the last 10 years, MBA programs have developed robust experiential entrepreneurship programs taught by clinical professors who lived through the dot-com years. Just like with consulting or banking, these programs provide unparalleled access to the upper echelons of the industry. They are magnets for start-up recruiting, angel investors, venture funding, and access to world-class accelerators and incubators. There are also the hubs for research studying what factors truly separate successful new ventures from the rest.

@Some1ToKnow

The schools that are the "best" for entrepreneurship have the right combination of exposure, funding, critical mass of interested students, experience, faculty, and commitment to focusing on new ventures. IMO, Stanford, HBS, MIT, Booth, Wharton, and Haas are tops. FWIW, Olin-Babson has been ranked #1 by USNews almost every year they've published such a ranking, but I know nothing about it.

If you are going to go all-in on starting a business, a bunch of MBA debt probably isn't going to help. Read Lean Startup, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Good to Great and a bunch of other similar books, and you can get the gist of the "learning" about what makes startups/businesses in general successful.

Would a top MBA be helpful? Sure, it's a signal and network. Do you need it to become a great entrepreneur? Absolutely not.

 

To be clear, I'm not making the case for an MBA as the only path to entrepreneurial success (or even the best one). I think it's overly dismissive to say it has no value though. A couple of start-ups at my school just split up $100k in prize money and one of them reportedly has a seven-figure term sheet in the works. It's a pretty low-risk place to pursue wild ideas for 2 years. If your venture doesn't work out, you can work for a friend's, get hired by a growth-phase start-up, or join the (gasp) big tech ranks.

techie674:

Buy a couple of textbooks and sign up for a couple of courses. Save your $200k and invest it in your business.

Yup, that's all it takes. 1% here I come.

 

Studying to be an entrepreneur sounds a bit silly, really. You either got what it takes to be an entrepreneur or you don't. No one cares about your MBA as an entrepreneur, investors only cares about the viability of your ideas.

As a startup, your budget will be incredibly tight, a few dollars saved can means the difference between staying or gong out of business. Your life will be a lot easier without having student debt cutting into your already razor thing margins.

Read a few books.

 

Dolorem sed maxime labore eum. Nobis praesentium ea omnis eligendi quo. Animi asperiores ab quia aut quos est. Similique sit illo et.

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