Well, there’s no reason to do an MBA if you are interested in learning the content. This is quite true, especially as people who write about business tend to be quite good at reaching people. I did a good part of an MBA as part of my engineering degree at a world class university in Britain.

I can honestly say, engineering is much more taxing on the brain than business. It’s hard to even call it learning, when what you’re doing is just reading through some cleaned up summaries of what various businesses did. Mostly it seemed like storytime, with companies instead of fairies. You better watch out, or you’ll get leapfrogged! As if people in the old businesses hadn’t considered that. In general there was a lot of dressing things up as complicated when really the truth was probably that the firms did what they could with the information they had. Mintzberg probably sticks out as the best guy to describe how decisions are really made.

Looking back, there was also a real lack of practical business skills being taught. The main thing I would teach is some form of agile management. Or any kind of practical how-to-organize a group to do something. Without a guide on the nitty gritty, you end up having a strange birds-eye view of the business, with no idea how to get towards your goal. In my career working practices have made the biggest difference to what strategies could be followed.