Is A Master’s In Management Degree In Your Future?
Maria |
July 8, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, our hosts discuss the growing popularity of the Master’s in Management (MIM) degree. The MIM degree is becoming the predominant graduate degree in business in Europe and is attracting humanities graduates who struggle to find employment. 

While MIM programs are well-established in Europe, they are still relatively new in the United States, raising some questions that you might find answers to in this episode. The conversation explores the differences between MIM and MBA degrees, the benefits of MIM programs for students with non-business backgrounds, and the potential complementarity of MIM and MBA degrees.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.770] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Vernon with poets and quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co hosts Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Vila. We’re going to talk about a degree that is gaining in popularity in the US. And is the predominant graduate degree in business in Europe. It’s the master’s in management. What separates a MIM from an MBA? We’ll tell you in a few moments, but generally, if you graduated from an undergraduate institution with one of those wonderful degrees like I did in Political Science or English, I double majored, or maybe you majored in philosophy or geography or any one of the humanities subjects, and you are finding it difficult to locate a job. The MIM is where it basically shows you how to get not only a job, but land one in a company that no longer has the kind of rotational training programs that companies once did. Back into the 1980s, many companies reduced many layers of management and training programs for newly graduated people with geography, English, political Science, and other degrees kind of went away. Companies began disinvesting in those kind of training programs, hoping to get graduates who they could hire and who could contribute in the job from day one.

[00:01:42.660] – John

And this is what has made really, the Master’s in Management so popular. It is a pre experienced degree can be anywhere from one year to even three in some cases, and it really prepares you for a role in business. Companies in Europe. Love MIMs. In fact, many of the MIM programs at the business schools are more selective than their full time residential MBA programs in the US. Probably the highest ranked MBA program with a MIM is Kellogg at Northwestern. The degree is proliferating in the US. And is considered to be a big growth area for US. Business schools. Caroline, what’s the difference really, between a MIM and an MBA?

[00:02:29.390] – Caroline

There are a lot of different flavors of MIMs, so it does depend on which school and which program that you’re looking at. So, for example, the INSEAD Masters in Management, it’s a pre experience program versus the full time MBA, for which students typically have, on average, five to six years of work experience. And so the Masters in Management is actually a little bit longer, so it’s 14 to 16 months, whereas the full time MBA is ten to twelve months. And that reflects the fact that with the full time MBA program, the faculty can really rely on the fact that students coming into the classroom have really rich and deep professional experience that they can draw on and they can relate what they’re learning to their previous experience and give it that context very quickly. Whereas students who are coming in straight from undergraduate, I’m sure that they’ve done internships. A lot of them would have done internships and would already have start to build their resume. But of course, they won’t have the same length of professional experience that the MBAs would have. And so it’s necessary to just take things a little bit more slowly and start from an earlier point in some of those classes.

[00:03:49.170] – Caroline

And so it makes sense to take things to expand the program over a longer period. And I think it’s a wonderful option. It gives students a great, as you said, a great entry point into the marketplace. It gives them a wonderful credential. It’s not just an academic experience. The schools will also work with students on figuring out their career plans and connecting them with employers. And so it’s a great springboard into the marketplace, into the workforce, and into recruitment opportunities. So, a great way to transition from an undergraduate degree, as you said earlier, John, particularly in Europe, a few years back, the European Union restructured the undergraduate degrees to harmonize undergraduate programs because there was a lot of variability in Europe, with some undergraduate programs being very long. In Germany, even sort of five, six years was not at all uncommon and some very short. So in the UK, typically three years. So there was an effort to harmonize the undergraduate degree across Europe, and that led to a lot more students coming out of their undergraduate degrees at an earlier age. And this fed an appetite for pre experienced Master’s degrees. And so this is also responding to that need, particularly in Europe, where students feel that after three years, they don’t feel quite yet done with their education.

[00:05:23.380] – Caroline

And they see these programs as a great way to transition from perhaps a very academic learning environment, as you said. Perhaps they’ve been studying English or history or something quite abstract, which doesn’t necessarily lend itself immediately to a professional career. And therefore, taking a Master’s in management would be a wonderful way to transition and build a great foundation of skills so that they can then make that successful transition into the workforce.

[00:05:55.970] – John

And you learn to speak the language of business. I mean, if you’re an English undergrad and you go into the marketplace, you have no idea what return on equity is, how stock markets work, how the global economy is interdependent. You just have no basic knowledge of how business operates. And business does have a language, and learning that language is important if you’re going to get a job at a company. Maria, what’s your take on MIM?

[00:06:28.210] – Maria

So my take on it is, I think, for Europe, for all the reasons that Caroline explained, I think it makes a lot of sense in some ways. I’ve always sort of viewed the MIM degree as an opportunity for people who, perhaps, as you mentioned earlier, John, get to the end of their undergraduate careers and realize, oh, my gosh, maybe I do want to pursue a career in business, but I didn’t study it. Or I didn’t have the opportunity to study it before, but I don’t want to go back and redo my bachelor’s degree, but I don’t have experience. I’m too young for an MBA. So it’s always seemed to me to be sort of like a stop gap. It’s not quite an MBA, but it’s not quite a full bachelor’s. And so I think it’s a great opportunity for people to make that transition. I know in the States, for example, in the past, because as you mentioned, the MIM in the States is not as popular, but for example, if you were an English major or political science major and you got a job, say, at McKinsey, that’s what the Tuck, the Dartmouth Tuck Business Bridge program used to be.

[00:07:20.520] – Maria

The corporations would send these recent graduates to it was significantly shorter than a full Master’s, but it was sort of like, I think a ten or twelve week type of program on the Tuck campus. And it would be full time and it would be kind of like a crash course and all of the business fundamentals that they would need, for example, to get in front of a client and talk about things like return on equity. And so I think the MIM in the US. It’s interesting that it’s starting to emerge because I’d be curious to learn more from Caroline. Is it more of a standardized experience in Europe? Because it has been around for longer? Because I think one of the trickier things with the US. Landscape is that there doesn’t seem to be a complete standardization. Like, some schools will have the Master’s in Asset Management and some schools will have the Masters in Management Science or Masters in Management data analytics. There doesn’t seem to be sort of a cohesive curriculum, whereas with an MBA, while the electives may vary pretty dramatically from school to school, the core MBA and what is an MBA program is very well known in the US.

[00:08:21.790] – Maria

But I think with the Master’s degrees there’s, like the Master’s in Finance, that’s MIT Sloan, that’s 18 months. But then they have a Master’s in Management Science, I think it’s called. That’s nine months. It’s sort of all over the place. So do you happen to know do either one of you happen to know if in Europe it’s already a little bit more of an established curriculum and everyone sort of universally knows what the MIM is?

[00:08:47.290] – John

Or is it yeah, I think that’s true in Europe, definitely, because it’s so popular and there are so many of them in the US. If you talk to directors of MIM programs I had a recent interview with the head of the MIM program at Georgetown University’s McDonough School, and she admits that there’s an education job here. Both the market, as defined by aspiring students as well as employers need to be educated about the degree and what its value is because it’s still very early on in the US. Market. And I think you’re right, there could be a lot of confusion with a lot of the other specialty master’s degrees that are out there. And this is quite a different and distinct product because it really just gives you the fundamentals of what a business education is. I mean, the basic accounting, finance, marketing strategy, and then some capstone project typically, that allows you to integrate those basic skills in a project of one kind or another. And different schools have different flavors of this. But I see most of this as pretty commoditized. Now At Paris has just done an entire revamp of its Masters in Management program to emphasize ESG issues.

[00:10:10.370] – John

And that’s kind of interesting too, because particularly in Europe, and I will say Europe is ahead of the United States in terms of sustainability and ESG. And a lot of the European schools and their MIMs have this emphasis, but not to the extent that HEC has gone to develop it. In part after conversations with incoming students, alumni and employers who see sustainability and all the other issues related to governance and the role of business and society as key drivers of new business graduates and what motivates them and what they need to be thinking about, what kind of skills they need to bring to the workplace. So I do think that while the knowledge is generally commoditized, there are some changes afoot, particularly in Europe, that are the result of demand from incoming students and from employers. Even in Europe, the programs are growing because it’s only recently that INSEAD and IESE and Barcelona launched MIM programs even though they’re so well established in Europe. So even in Europe, the classes are expanding in enrollment and new and very great schools. I mean, IESE and Barcelona and INSEAD are among the top five world business schools and they’re just only getting into the MIM game.

[00:11:43.620] – John

So there’s no doubt that this degree seems to be in demand and has great value. I mean, Caroline, why do you think INSEAD waited so long, in fact, to enter that market?

[00:11:56.340] – Caroline

Well, I think they were waiting to see how things panned out in the market. I think there was also some hesitancy to launch a program for pre experienced students because the school, the MBA is the average age is 28 29. So it’s quite different to be addressing an audience that is straight out of undergrad. It’s a very different group. So I think that there was some hesitancy about bringing in that group and concerned that it would be a very different type of student. But actually the experience has been extremely positive. It’s been very successful. The MIM students at Ins yet are a wonderful group of actually surprisingly mature young students. And I think the school is thrilled with how it’s gone. But it was definitely a different program. And also initially, when MIMs began to emerge, the price point was quite low compared to full time MBA programs. And so I think the school was also figuring out how to potentially launch a program that really fit with INSEAD, where it’s really a premium product and they weren’t going to offer a heavily discounted program just for the sake of launching that particular program and competing in that market.

[00:13:36.310] – John

Yeah, that all makes sense. I should let everyone know. And this is kind of interesting that Caroline is about to embark on a journey that every parent ends up doing. She is bringing one of her children, a daughter, on a college trip. And I wonder if Caroline might theorize about what major you would like your daughter to undertake when she does get into one of the schools that you will visit over the next couple of weeks. Do you want it to be humanities major and then maybe get a MIM? Or would you prefer that she just enrolled in a business school and get that business degree and move forward with that?

[00:14:17.810] – Caroline

Well, I am definitely not going to tell her what she should study. She’s extremely headstrong and I will be put in my place very quickly if I try to express my reference. She’s actually very interested in psychology, which I think could be a very interesting course of study and also could be relevant to a lot of different future career paths. But I really don’t care. I just want her to study something that she loves doing and whatever that is is absolutely fine with me. I have no particular direction I’m trying to push her in at all, but.

[00:15:00.530] – John

I do with two parents who have MBAs from world’s leading schools, Stanford and INSEAD. I’m sure that an MBA is in her future, no matter what her major is at undergrad.

[00:15:11.020] – Caroline

Well, I don’t know. So she actually doesn’t particularly show an inclination that direction. But my third child is already trying to figure out how she can start a business, so I do have some hope for her. But I would actually be thrilled if one of my kids did want to do a program like the MIM one day, because thinking back to my own experience, I studied French and German undergrad and French and German at the university where I studied was I was studying medieval German, right? And it was a very academic program. And so then I went to work in consulting in London. As you said, John, it’s a whole different language that you have to learn. And the firm that I worked for, they had to invest a huge amount in training those recruits, right, because they recruited young talent from top universities. But a lot of people like me, who had been studying something that was completely unrelated to the world of business and didn’t necessarily have a lot of experience, relevant experience, it’s tough on the employer because they have to invest a lot of money in that training and it’s a huge learning curve for that young professional.

[00:16:26.310] – Caroline

So I think something like a Min would have been a great experience for me. So I would personally be thrilled if one of my kids went in that direction in the future. And it doesn’t preclude you doing an MBA later on, either. I did talk to the admissions director, Lindsay, about that. Is that something do you see that it’s kind of a completely different program, and someone who does a MIM would therefore not be a good candidate for an MBA, because haven’t they covered a lot of the same curriculum? Actually, what they’re seeing is that the programs can be complementary because the MBA, you have a lot of different electives. You’re addressing things from a different level at that stage. And so they actually are seeing people who’ve done the MIM who are interested in then coming back and doing an MBA later on. So I don’t think having a MIM precludes you then from doing an MBA at a great school later on.

[00:17:26.750] – John

Yeah, really good point. Maria, any last words on the MIM?

[00:17:32.110] – Maria

No, I’m excited for it to start to take off more in the US. Because there’s such a variety of masters in finance, masters in asset management, like in the US. And I do wish that there would be some standardization because I think that would be more helpful for the schools, for students, for educating the marketplace, as you mentioned. John right. It’s one thing if I’m a recruiter and I know what I’m getting with a MIM. A graduate versus a Master’s in quantitative finance versus a Master’s in Finance versus a Master’s in asset management. Like, there are just so many different ones in the US. And yeah, I do think that based on the MIM curriculum, it’s very similar to it’s the same thing where I took accounting and finance and a bunch of classes like that in college. And when you’re in undergraduate, I suspect the MIM might be very similar where it is more about the mechanics of here’s how you build a balance sheet, here’s how you build a PNL, here’s how you depreciate an asset versus when you get to business school. You are looking at it from a much higher level.

[00:18:28.900] – Maria

And so at first I thought, wow, I already took accounting in college. Why is business school forcing me to take it again? That’s annoying. But it was a completely different ballgame. It was less about the definitions and the mechanics of it and more about here’s how a management team can use accounting and the principles of accounting to manage their overall business. So I don’t think that there may be some overlap in the course titles. However, I believe the way in which the coursework is examined is very different between the two programs. So I’m excited for all of these opportunities for people to learn more.

[00:18:59.540] – John

True. And I should point out that the Financial Times has been ranking MIM programs for a number of years. That ranking tends to be pretty European centric. Very few us. Schools have participated in it. So it’s not a full list globally, but it’s a really good indication of sort of the MIM landscape, particularly in Europe. And you can come to Poets and Quants and you will see. What we tried to do is to look at the top US. Schools and determine who is already offering a MIM and how do they differ from each other, what do they cost, how long do they last, what schools are in the game, and how do they teach this subject to pre experienced students. So I think you can benefit from that. Check out our story, online now at Poets and Quants on the best MIM programs in the US. Meantime, thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been hearing our Business Casual podcast with Maria and Caroline.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Is A Master’s In Management Degree In Your Future?
Maria |
July 8, 2023

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. We have a really cool story to relate to you today. Me and my co host, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, are going to talk about the most disruptive MBA startups of the year. Every year, Poets& Quants invites the top schools all over the world.

To submit nominations for ventures with what we call the greatest potential for lasting beyond business school. So what we want to do is acknowledge MBAs who have launched really cool companies that are paving the way for the future. And this year, we have 41 student startups that we have honored in what is the sixth annual list of the most disruptive MBA startups.

And they come from all over. We got nominations from Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, INSEAD, London Business School and others. And, uh, I think what the basic list shows is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in business schools are a lot of great ideas. A lot of them are powered by AI. No surprise there.

They involve every imaginable industry. There’s a good number of these in the business of health as well as in beverages, consumer products and things like that. And I wonder, Caroline, if you have a favorite among this group, and I bet you it’s going to be an INSEAD startup.

[00:01:30] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I have a few favorites, and definitely INSEAD is on my list, although I’m going to start with a London Business School one.

Um, and there were a few international ones that I thought were really interesting. I like the story from kiro, which is a fintech startup, coming out of London Business School, founded by LBS student Alicia Chowdhury. she secured 200, 000 in funding, and it’s the first AI powered financial coach, which is designed to help,

Gen Zed, as I would say, or Gen Z, as you would say. and young adults, get personalized financial guidance. So that’s something that jumped out to me, given that I now have a young adult among my children and trying to teach her financial literacy is somewhat challenging, so I can definitely see the need for that. And she tells a really interesting story about how financial literacy was something that she had struggled with and realized that there was a gap in the market, right? There’s a lot of great financial information out there, but it’s not necessarily tailored and communicated well to young people. And she ended up working in finance before business school.

she doesn’t have a tech background, but she did. Teach herself the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, and she assembled a technical team to work with her. And I thought it was really interesting as well, how she leveraged the LBS resources. And I think a lot of the stories that you have in this article really tell a great deal about the power of business school experience in helping people launch a company. And of course, there’s often a lot of criticism about the value of going to business school. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, there’s no point going to business school. And I think that this article really debunks that. so for example, this is how she benefited from LBS.

She was a finalist in the LBS Launchpad. She completed the LBS Entrepreneurship Summer School. She joined the LBS Incubator. She led the LBS Entrepreneurship Club. And then, of course, she benefited greatly from a lot of the courses that she took at LBS. I got a lot of great advice from LBS faculty, as well as the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital.

I think a wonderful story about how a student had a vision of something that she wanted to do and saw a gap in the market and really went after it, leveraging that wonderful ecosystem that you get at business school and she’s got a VC group backing her. So that’s one of her investors and Aviva Group is a huge financial company.

I think it sounds very promising. So congratulations to Alicia.

[00:04:11] John Byrne: Yeah, you’re right. One of the things that comes through here is the support that students get from the schools. And their classmates and their professors, it’s a real terrific thing.

As you said before, a lot of people say, hey, if you want to start a company, instead of paying a school tuition, just use that as your seed capital and you’re going to be better off, but the truth is that a business school you’re surrounded by really smart colleagues and people who’ve been through this before and mentorship from professors and seed money from the many venture challenges that occur at different schools can make a very big difference and shift the odds in your favor of success. Maria, do you have a favorite?

[00:04:53] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, my favorite.

startup was Cell Mind, which is out of the Johns Hopkins business school. This one really hit home for me personally. What they are trying to do is they are trying to maximize access to a type of cancer therapy called “Car T”. And I have indirectly lived this. We have a good friend from business school who has been battling cancer for several years, and last year there was a complete rollercoaster around  this car T therapy. And I apologize to any doctors if I’m butchering this. But basically, my understanding is that if it works for you, it essentially can cure your cancer or cause it to go into remission. But, if for whatever reason, if your body is too weak at the time that you receive it, it can actually kill you. Unfortunately, it can cause something called a cytokine storm, I think.

And so, the decision of whether to go or no go is obviously one that is very fraught with a lot of, emotion and risk. And so, we actually had a friend who last year was approved for CAR T. But then in the weeks right before they were going to give it to her, they then disapproved her because she had gotten weaker … it was this whole roller coaster.

And so any sort of startup that is doing something to figure out, which patients actually are likely to do well with this therapy? Can we expand our doctors being perhaps understandably a little too cautious because they’re concerned about the negative side effects, perhaps being worse than the.than the cancer itself.

Anything that can help expand access to this is why they were number one in my book. And as you guys were just talking about. Because Johns Hopkins is one of the best, if not the best medical school in the world, this is a great example of a business school student or group of business school students leveraging the resources and the expertise at that overarching institution, trying to find ways to commercialize it, and just make the most of those resources.

I really loved that story.

[00:06:40] John Byrne: Yeah, and that’s what you increasingly find. it’s not a bunch of MBA students doing their thing. It’s reaching out and having these really entrepreneurial collisions with students from other departments, other schools where they have deep expertise in computer science or engineering or medicine or law or public policy or environmental sciences teaming up with MBAs to launch things. which really give them extra power.

One of my favorites comes out of, uh, Chicago Booth. And, it’s sort

a really interesting idea where, first off, it’s called Encore, and it’s a marketplace for high end collectibles. Now, you think, how could that really be a cool thing? What they’ve done is they’ve combined TikTok style videos. With the traditional eBay auction format, to create a really engaging experience for people who want to shop for these collectibles. But what’scool is the MBA who’s behind this. His name is Will Enema, at first thought he shouldn’t apply to Chicago Booth, new venture challenge, because he had already raised a pre seed round and thought that Encore might not be good for that traditional, giving money out kind of program. But, he entered it after he was urged to by a number of professors at Booth. The idea placed second in the competition. He won $350, 000 to help launch his company, but here’s the real kicker:

Within two weeks of that competition, a venture capitalist who participated in the judging agreed to lead their seed round. So it just shows you how, incredible things can happen, in the environment of a business school.

Now, Caroline, I’m sure you have others that you really thought were really cool. Name another one.

[00:08:29] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. So my second one is of course, an INSEAD startup and it’s called faceflow. ai. And I really liked this one because it’s an AI powered skincare platform. So again, relating it to my personal experience of having four daughters who are constantly clamoring for the. latest ridiculous beauty product that they’ve seen on Instagram.

I think this is a fantastic idea.

What it does is it actually gives you scientifically based product recommendations, right? So they have for the two founders, Daniel Patel and Simon Zhang, Patel had previously founded a marketplace for international skincare brands. So he knew the skin, the beauty industry, skincare products.

And then his partner, Simon, is an experienced AI engineer, and so they’ve combined their expertise to bring AI to skincare recommendations. And it’s underway. I checked out their website. I have signed up already. The product is not yet available, but I’m looking forward to when it comes through.

And they won the INSEAD French competition and, talk about how they’ve benefited from the very entrepreneurial environment at INSEAD,

I really enjoyed reading about their experience and I’m excited to learn more about their products.

[00:09:49] John Byrne: Yeah, absolutely. And now

Maria, I know there are 2 Harvard startups on the list from your alma mater. did you pick 1 of them as your 2nd choice?

[00:10:00] Maria Wich-Vila: It was not necessarily my 2nd choice, but there was 1 called Vulcan Investments. This is a little bit out of my, Wheelhouse. So I think we all tend to gravitate towards something we know or something we have experience with, but it’s trying to figure out how to solve the rare earth magnet problem. Right now. A lot of these rare earth materials that are powering modern technologies are coming from China, which poses several challenges, especially should relations with that country not go well in the future. So this is trying to solve for that issue. I think that was a really interesting one.

But actually, my second choice was one that again, I have indirect personal experience with, albeit in a different way. It was called Yogger. What they’re trying to do is, I believe it’s taking your phone to watch you as you perform exercise then give you feedback on, your gait, your form, et cetera.

And this was really interesting to me, not so much because of exercise, although I wish it were (ha ha) (though: side note, my dad was a track and cross country coach for decades and I totally forgot about that in the moment, but I should have mentioned that!!! D’oh!!!), but who knows, maybe this will motivate me to jog more (har har har).

In the interview with the entrepreneur. he talked about how you can do things like a gait analysis right now, in other words, tracking how your legs move when you are running or jogging, and then providing an analysis, but these sorts of things are very difficult to get to. It’s expensive. You need to be set up with, they put a whole bunch of sensors on all of your joints. and I have a friend who has a child with cerebral palsy and they’ve had to do these, go to actually Hopkins (this is not a Hopkins based startup, it’s from Tuck, Dartmouth Tuck), but they’ve (my friends, I mean) had to go to Hopkins and actually have these, it’s a day long thing to set up your child with the different sensors. And so the thought of using something as simple as an iPhone app, perhaps, machine learning, et cetera. all that good stuff to analyze your gait and make this accessible. It’s not only I think useful for casual exercise enthusiasts, but I think it could also have ramifications and uses even in other areas. For example, kids with special needs. So I was really excited about this one.

John Byrne:

MIT Sloan has three startups on our list this year.

That’s more than any other school. And one of the really cool ones is called Vertical Horizons. This is an incredibly ambitious startup. It’s all about commercializing high density, high efficiency power supplies for AI computing. Essentially, it’s a semiconductor company. and you might not think that an MBA would be involved in actually creating a semiconductor company.

But it’s founded by Cynthia Allen, an MBA in the class of 2024 at Sloan and one of her professors. So it’s a good example of where university develop some sort of new technology or new insights. And then needs to commercialize it. And in this case, you have an MBA coming along, who has a great interest in this, and is helping to commercialize it. The actual idea of it has 4 million in research grant funding to develop the technology. So there’s a good amount of money behind this very ambitious idea.

I think, stepping away from the individual startups, what I think this says about, the ability of people who want to go to business school and use that experience as an incubator to launch a startup, it’s alive and well, it’s a great way to launch a company because it does take a lot of risk off the table and these startups, these 41 startups that these different business schools really give you a great insight into what different people are doing.

Caroline, I’m sure, and Maria as well, you probably meet a number of people in your practices, that want to use an MBA to do a startup. Do you think they’re ready to take full advantage of these experiences?

Caroline Diarte Edwards:

Yeah, I certainly hear from a lot of candidates who are hoping to launch a venture. Some of them want to do it as soon as they graduate and for some of them it’s more of a longer term ambition because of course financing can be a challenge.

Especially if you’ve invested a lot in taking on a lot of debt with your MBA and a lot of the themes that I hear, candidates are interested in come through in your article as well. So it’s noticeable that there are quite a few startups in your list that address, healthcare issues as Maria highlighted, also education, environmental challenges. And I think those are three areas that I hear a lot about from candidates in terms of where they would really like to have an impact.

And I think, something else that is noticeable is that a lot of them are really trying to have a positive impact on the world as well. They’re really trying to address,  fundamental societal challenges, many of them, which I think is wonderful from health care, mental health issues, pollution. et cetera. There’s a lot of really interesting, and important issues that are being addressed by some of these startups. and, I think it’s wonderful that we have this young generation, going through business school who are ready tackle these challenges that that they have inherited from our generation.

John Byrne:

Yeah. And these ideas are going way beyond, some of the earlier ideas of five, 10 years ago, hookup apps and match.com, uh, wannabes and things like that. some of these ideas are remarkably sophisticated and elegant as well.

Maria, last words.

Maria Wich-Vila:

I think that this article not only is very optimistic in terms of these amazing ideas that are out there, but I also like that it shows that there are so many different paths to entrepreneurship through the MBA that first of all, number one, the NBA is valuable for entrepreneurship, which, as you noted a second ago, is often a stereotype that that exists that, oh, I don’t need this. but also there are so many different MBA programs out there. Look at the range of schools that are creating these amazing startups. Look at the fact, one of the, Stanford ones, the student was not an MBA student. They were an MSx student.

Sometimes I’ll meet people who are a little bit on the older side who are applying and they’re like, I have to do the two year program and I’m like, no, you can… you just need to get your foot in the door and even if it’s that MSxs program, it’s one year versus two years. For example, you can, you just need to get to a university that’s going to teach you the things you need and give you the resources and then you can take it from there.

So I, the other thing I really appreciate about this article is showing the breadth of programs and the breadth of students and the breadth of backgrounds of these students who are creating incredible new companies.

[00:16:37] John Byrne: Yeah, check it out. It’s called most disruptive MBA startups of 2025, and it’s on the Poets& Quants website.

If you are interested in doing a startup, I think you’ll learn a lot about how business school can help you make it a reality. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

Maria

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