These are observations mainly based on our local businessmen, which I feel is reflective of the thinking of most developing Asian cities.  Your observations may differ depending on your country or culture.

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For the last 20 years, ever since I took up a course of business management for my bachelors, I have been a keen observer of the way we do business and also how people of different countries and cultures do business.

One of the observations that is immediately glaring is how entrepreneurs or businessmen thinks whether studying management can indeed help make a businessman more successful or not. In fact, the attitude of most entrepreneurs here is that success is more a result of who you know, rather than what you know that matters, and of course, and whether you have the capital or not. It is an offshoot also of the Chinese way of defining success which they call guanxi - meaning who are your connections.  It is also more as a result of being in the right time in the right place — and not necessarily the right skills.

Obviously, this does mean that many people , unfortunately, don’t have a high regard for academic discipline. It is an established notion that while getting a masters degree or excelling in school can help you get better jobs, it does not necessarily equate to a person becoming a more successful entrepreneur. This disdain is highlighted by more than a couple of persons who told me that they took up medicine, or law, because they need to study medicine to become doctors, but if that does not succeed, they can always be entrepreneurs. And you hear from students that they went on to get a business administration or accounting degree, because they did not quite know what they wanted to do. As if getting a business degree or going to business is almost like something you do when you have nowhere else to go.

This has resulted in our country probably having one of the lowest rates of people going forward to get a masters degree. In countries like the United States, almost a third of people who get a bachelors moved up to get a masters, but in here, it is as low as 3 or 4 percent. The only large pool of people I know who go on to advanced studies are either those that are necessary for their profession - like medicine, law or teachers. For others, especially in business, people feel comfortable enough that an MBA almost is not required. As if it is almost a given that what you will learn in business school is very different from what you will encounter in the actual world of business, and therefore not relevant.

I was influenced by this notion, and almost 15 years since I left college, I find myself busy enough to keep foregoing my decision to enroll in an MBA course. Was it really necessary? Will I really learn something?

Last 2002, I took the plunge and enrolled. And it was an eye opener. No, business professors don’t live in ivory towers, and yes, their theories are practical and applicable. With that was borne a new respect that indeed higher studies matter.

Now we are in the 21^st century. It is the age of technology and globalization. Your competitor is not anymore the next door shop who is equally ignorant of business principles. Your competitors now are businesses in China, or in India or Poland who may be sporting masteral degrees. The competitive bar is higher. You need advanced studies to fight and define your competitive edge.

Is an MBA necessary? If you are like me, a bizdriven person, one of whose goal is to make my dreams come true in the form of my business, then it is.  If you want to excel in the field, be one of the top 5 percent of the business, you will. If you want to grow twice, thrice or 10 times your size now, you will. 

However, if you are the entrepreneur which I earlier dubbed as alterpreneurs, whose goal is to go into business for a certain lifestyle which the business will provide, and not necessarily focus on the satisfaction oor experience of owning or operating a business, maybe not.  Your goal after all, is not to build something lasting, but just to make enough to ensure a comfortable lifestyle which allows you to do many other things.

What do you think?