What They Do (and Don't) Teach You in Business School

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"You can make anything," he notes, "but you have to allocate engineering resources. Will it be cost-effective when you do it? Because of business school, I know how to do that kind of thinking."

Hal Plotkin is a contributing writer at Inc. who is based in Palo Alto, Calif. Research assistance was provided by Mike Hofman.

My Favorite Course Was Marketing

BRAD CARY: President of CIBT Inc., a provider of support services for international travel and business with projected 1997 revenues of $12.5 million

M.B.A.: University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School of Business, 1989

FAVORITE COURSE: Marketing Strategy, taught by Professor Barbara E. Kahn

"In that class we played a simulation game whose purpose was to teach us that unexpected events could happen. Our game was focused on a consumer product, and we got a sales forecast with which we made certain strategic decisions. But then a competitor emerged with another product that stole market share from us, and we missed our forecast. The game teaches you to focus and forces you to realize that every decision you make will not necessarily be the right one--it's a humbling experience."

MARTIN SMOLER: President of American Echo Inc., a maker of echocardiography positioning systems with projected 1997 revenues of $3 million

M.B.A.: J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, 1971

FAVORITE COURSE: Marketing Management, taught by Professor Philip Kotler

"The majority of people in the world think of marketing as something synonymous with sales. They think it's a skill based on being charming and having good interpersonal relationships. Kotler taught me that marketing was much more scientific; that it could be organized in a concise way; that it could be broken down into pieces, and then you could determine how those pieces worked together. Just as there are rules to geometry and algebra, there are rules to marketing--Kotler brought marketing to that level."

The Survey

To find out how experienced company builders viewed their M.B.A. education, Inc. sent a fax survey to 180 Inc. 500 alumni, attendees of Birthing of Giants (seminars hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum, the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization, and Inc.), and Entrepreneur of the Year winners who had M.B.A.'s. The survey was developed with the help of advisory-board members Jim Collins, operator of a management laboratory in Boulder, Colo.; Scott Cook, chairman of Intuit Corp., in Mountain View, Calif.; Larry Mohr, at Mohr, Davidow Ventures, in Menlo Park, Calif.; Ruth Owades, president and CEO of Calyx and Corolla, in San Francisco; Robert Sullivan, director of the University of Texas IC ² Institute, in Austin, Tex.; and Ed Zschau, a professor of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, in Cambridge, Mass. Research assistance was provided by Margherita Altobelli, Beth Gunn, and M. Patricia Singer.

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