MBA business card

Put Your MBA into Your Work, Not Your Title

By Tim Berry

I’m shocked to note that it’s been seven years since I posted Note to MBAs: Drop the Comma MBA, please! The point was exactly what the title implies, that people with MBA degrees ought not to use that degree as a title like CPAs and MDs do. That one sparked some surprisingly (to me) animated comments.... Read More »

MBA and tech startups

Does an MBA Help in Running a High-Tech Business?

By Tim Berry

Question (on Quora): Does an MBA help in starting up and running a technology-based business? My Answer on MBA for High Tech I have an MBA degree and I bootstrapped a software company past $10M annual sales and was a co-founder of another software company that went public in less than four years. And the... Read More »

Reflections on MBA experience

By Tim Berry

The prestige of the MBA degree is tarnished quite a bit since I got mine in the early 1980s. And that's for pretty good reasons. With the world of startups like it is, and the progress of high tech, there are some good arguments against stopping a career for two years to go back to school. Still, my two years with the MBA were the right thing for me, for my family, and for my entrepreneurship. Everything is case by case. Read More »

Does Business Education Stifle Creativity

By Tim Berry

Business Education vs. Creativity Does business education stifle innovation and creativity? You probably already know Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, from 2006, Do Schools Kill Creativity? It’s one of the five or so most viewed and most discussed TED talks. His basic idea is that school focus too much on the academic, not enough on... Read More »

paper crumpled

My Dumb MBA Mistake

By Tim Berry

I’ve made a lot of mistakes. You can’t build a business from scratch without making mistakes. It’s an entire category on this blog, more than 150 posts. This dumb MBA mistake wasn’t my worst, but it’s one of the easiest to explain afterwards, and I hope one that might help others avoid making it too. There... Read More »

True Story: A Great Presentation Wins Big

By Tim Berry

Do great presentations launch businesses? Not always, perhaps, but sometimes, yes. And in this case, yes. Or maybe it’s just a great business. I was in Austin TX at the event last Saturday when NuMat Technologies, a startup launched at Northwestern, won the University of Texas’ Venture Labs Investment Competition.   I was also at Rice... Read More »

Is it Possible That MBAs, Like Wine, Need Aging?

By Tim Berry

It occurs to me that I’ve had many good experiences, with hires and colleagues and business contacts, with people who had MBA degrees and years of experience. And I’ve had generally bad experiences with young MBAs fresh out of business school. You could guess the reasons. Arrogance and entitlement come to mind. Maybe it’s a... Read More »

Is Education Missing its Target or Just Aiming at the Wrong Target?

By Tim Berry

I’d like to think that business education should be about education more than business. It should be about leadership, perspective, and vision, more than about analysis, buzzwords, jobs, and salaries. But is it? Or is that just the kind of high-sounding stuff we write when looking back, years later? I’ve seen two important pieces on... Read More »