The Future Of The MBA + Our Dean Of The Year
Maria |
October 10, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts discuss significant changes in MBA programs, focusing on the closures of one-year accelerated programs at Notre Dame and Cornell University. They explore the reasons behind these closures, suggesting that schools are struggling to attract candidates to different MBA formats amid a shift towards specialized master’s programs. The conversation also addresses the challenges of managing resources for both one-year and two-year MBA programs within the same institution.

The discussion then turns to the achievements of Anne Harrison, the Dean of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, who has been named Dean of the Year. Her leadership has led to significant advancements in entrepreneurship, sustainability, and diversity at Haas. The hosts highlight the impact of women in academic leadership roles and speculate on future trends in leadership at top business schools.

 

If you’re curious about the potential future direction of MBA programs and its evolving landscape, this episode is for you.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.210] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host Caroline Diarte Edwards. Maria Wich-Vila, we want to talk about the future of the MBA. This past week, Notre Dame announced that it was going to shut down its one year accelerated program. Them that follows Cornell University decision to also shut down its one year program. And over the years, we’ve seen quite a few schools shutter their two year residential MBAs, including Penn State, which will shut down its two year program next year. We’ve had University of Iowa, Wake Forest University, Thunderbird, Virginia Tech, Simmons College all given it up, along with the University of Illinois, which went totally. You know, a lot of people may inevitably ask, well, is the MBA less desirable today or not? And why is Notre Dame, and why is Cornell, two very good, strong universities with great business school, shutting down their one year programs? Now, Caroline, you have a view on this because, of course, in Europe, most of the MBA programs are only one year, and that’s widely accepted and seemingly preferred.

[00:01:23.350] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s right. It seems somewhat counterintuitive that they’re closing their one year rather than the two year programs. As you mentioned in your article, John, there was a GMAT survey that showed know there’s been an increase in interest for one year rather than two year MBAs. And now, according to GMAC, more prospective candidates say that they’re interested in one year rather than two year programs. So they seem to be going in the wrong direction, at least at first glance. So I think maybe what’s happening here is that it’s difficult to have two different formats in the same school. I think that you have to pick your camp, right. You have to decide which model you’re going to focus on and focus on making that one successful. And having two quite different formats can be confusing for the market. So I could understand that they may struggle to attract candidates if they’re known for one format rather than the other. And I would imagine that there are additional costs involved with running two very different formats. And so I would imagine that that has become more difficult as time has gone on, and so that they have decided that they have to focus, and probably the two year programs have been their flagship programs for many years and continue to have perhaps greater success than the one year programs that were launched more recently.

[00:02:44.310] – Caroline

So I think that may be what’s happening. And I think also, as you know, this is part of a broader trend where schools are a little bit further down the pecking order in the rankings and in perceptions of quality of business schools are struggling, frankly. And my husband was at his Stanford reunion recently and the dean was talking about how he believes that there will be. Ultimately, you’ll be left with a handful of top business schools which have flagship two year MBA programs that will continue to be very successful as they are today and will continue to attract outstanding candidates, as they have done for many years and as we see them continue to do. And then you’ll have a few other options. Right. So as you said, the international MBA program is typically one year format. And that they are well known for that, that’s become part of their brand and that attracts offered a different cohort of often very international candidates who may have had less savings power than candidates coming into the top two year programs in the US. And therefore, the efficiency and the cost savings of doing one year rather than two year are very attractive to that group.

[00:04:04.030] – Caroline

And then you’ll have a somewhat fragmented market with candidates going into more and more candidates going into online programs. Right. You have often commented, John, on the growth of those one year programs and increasingly schools that are well known for having a really strong brand offering online programs like the Wharton executive MBA. And then we have seen the growth of other masters programs. So masters in data analytics, masters in management, masters in finance that have sprung up over the last few years and have absorbed and potentially have cannibalized some of the MBA programs. So I think that may be the direction that we are moving in and that perhaps these closures are part of that trend.

[00:04:56.680] – John

Yeah, that’s very true. Maria, you have a take on this?

[00:05:00.850] – Maria

Yeah, it’s fascinating to see that this is the direction that they’re going in. I wonder if part of the issue has been one of expectation. You know, Caroline alluded to the fact that if you’re trying to juggle a two year program and a one year program at the same time, you’re probably diverting your resources and spreading them kind of thin. I wonder if the one year program, if people entered the one year program that was spun out of an existing two year program and they were expecting sort of the same exact kind, maybe clearly a more condensed version, but still the same quality of education and same quality of career outcomes. And I wonder if recruiters were expecting the same quality of candidates. And I’m wondering if there’s something that we don’t know about people graduating from this one year program and perhaps not being satisfied with what they were expecting, not getting what they were expecting from it, either from an academic perspective or from a career opportunity perspective. There’s something odd going on because for many people a one year format would make a lot of sense and it’s popularity, enduring popularity in places like Europe attest to that.

[00:06:08.460] – Maria

So something confusing is happening here. But I do think that there is probably a cannibalization effect. As Caroline noted with people, the general management degree certainly has a lot of value, but there’s also a lot of value in becoming a specialist in something like data analytics or operations and supply chain or what have you. So I do wonder if those more specialized masters are just sort of taking over what you used to have to get an MBA for. Why do that when you can sort of specialize and eliminate the stuff that isn’t as relevant for your interests?

[00:06:46.690] – John

True. What’s kind of interesting is that these closures at Cornell and at Notre Dame are occurring at a time when the latest survey of prospective students by GMAC has found, for the first time ever, incidentally, that more students would prefer a one year MBA to a two year. They surveyed over 2700 people in 131 countries. 22% of those prospective students said they would prefer a one year accelerated program. 20% expressed a preference for the traditional two year program in the US. But I’m thinking in that survey that while the one year finally overtook the two year, it is such a global survey that I would bet that a lot of the people who are responding have their eye on Europe or other one year programs and not generally the few one year programs in the US. Because after all, Kellogg still has a one year. Duke has a one year. Emory has a one year. USC Southern Methodist has a one year. And then there’s the interesting phenomenon that Cornell, even though it got rid of its, or is getting rid of its accelerated one year MBA, it did launch the Cornell Tech MBA, which is a one year program, but it’s specifically designed to give an MBA to people who are interested in a career in tech.

[00:08:14.400] – John

And then you have NYU Stern, which has successfully launched two one year MBAs, but both are industry specific as well. So instead of a specialized degree in technology management or fashion and luxury field, they’re doing an MBA with a fashion and luxury slant and an MBA with a tech slant. And that seems to work. And my supposition there is that if you join an NYU stern program in tech and fashion or luxury, or you join the Cornell Tech MBA program, you have already decided what your industry is going to be. So immediately there’s more direction to your desire to have a graduate management education. And you don’t have to experiment. You don’t have to have that internship to help make you make a transition from one discipline or industry to another, which is generally the two year residential MBA is ideal for career switchers. So I think that gives the specialized MBA degree a little bit more cachet because it would be easier to place those students in the tech field or fashion and luxury field, given the fact that the whole program is around those industries and has experience or learning and projects with companies and advisory boards of executives from those companies.

[00:09:37.150] – John

So that everything is kind of working in one direction to get you that job. So even if you’re not someone in technology but want to do tech, you can do the one year tech MBA at Cornell or NYU Stern and make the transition because it’s so specialized. So there’s that. The other thing, I think there’s also outside the top 30 or so schools that are ranked for two year MBA programs. What you find is that the MBA programs, the other schools, even though they may be ranked from like 30 to 100, which puts them in a very specialized high group of schools, those programs tend to be very small. The cohorts are intimate and in many cases they are not profitable. The schools are hanging on to those MBA programs and fighting to recruit people and enroll people because they want that us news ranking. In many cases, the MBA ranking from US news is often considered to be the de facto ranking for a business school. So if you get a ranked MBA program, you can basically go in the market and claim, okay, you can get your specialty masters in supply chain management from a business school ranked in the top 50 in us news because the MBA ranking looms large over all the other programs that the school has.

[00:10:59.650] – John

Because the MBA is the only really, truly universally ranked graduate management program. Sure, there are some specialty rankings, but they’re few and far between. So people tend to rely on the MBA ranking and see it as an overall ranking for a business school. So you have a lot of schools that are hanging on to unprofitable small programs to get that ranking every year and to be able to broadcast it into the marketplace. And then you’re right. I mean, there is this expectation. So in Europe, the expectation is for a one year MBA, and it’s very popular, and that’s the preferred format for that degree. In the US, it is not the preferred format. And mainly I think it’s because of the whole career switching phenomena where most people who go into a two year MBA program want to switch careers and that summer internship is a crucial experience to help them do that. Do we think that other schools are going to follow suit. So in other words, a few one year MBA programs in the US, do you think they’re going to last? Do you think that maybe in some markets there may be an opportunity for schools to, let’s say if you have a non profitable two year, why don’t you just try a one year?

[00:12:20.180] – John

Right. Carolyn, what do you think?

[00:12:23.150] – Caroline

Well, I think possibly what has just happened with these closures shows that it’s not as easy to run a successful one year program. It’s not just a case of making a little bit faster and off you go. Right. I mean, INSEAD pioneered the one year format that started, what, 70 years ago now. Right.

[00:12:45.670] – Maria

And.

[00:12:48.630] – Caroline

The school’s dna is based around that particular format, and everything is geared towards making that effective, and it has a lot of implications. Right. So you talked about how two years gives you more time to make a career change and so on. Well, actually at INSEAD, a lot of the students are making very dramatic career changes, but the school has an incredible careers team that will start working with the students actually even before they turn up on campus. Right. So the whole job search is really crafted around that timescale. And I would imagine that it can be difficult for the career counselors at a two year program to adjust to that very different cycle. Right. For a one year program, it is just a very different way of working. And I could imagine sort of being pulled in two different directions is quite difficult. So I think that maybe schools didn’t anticipate how difficult it is and how complex it is to run a successful one year program. And the schools that have been doing this in Europe, in many cases, have been doing this and refining this for many years. And I think it’s also a case that it’s just schools, some of the schools, quite frankly, are struggling.

[00:14:09.350] – Caroline

Right. And so having their resources spread across multiple different formats doesn’t make sense anymore. So it will be interesting to see how things progress. But I think what you said about in the US, perhaps the right formula for one year programs is to focus on a specific industry that may make a lot of sense. Right. And rather than having a generalist MBA in a one year format, which is more complex than it may initially appear.

[00:14:42.090] – John

Yeah, definitely true. Maria, any final thoughts on this topic?

[00:14:47.130] – Maria

I mean, it’s just so fascinating because I feel like there are some top business schools that are. Yale is launching a brand new master’s in asset management, which is a one year program with a very specific industry focused.

[00:14:58.570] – John

Yeah. Chicago Booth is finally offering a MIM program that’s right.

[00:15:03.860] – Maria

And so it’s so interesting to see all of these different. Some schools are launching one year programs, maybe not one year MBAs, but one year specialized programs, and yet one year MBAs at other schools are being shuttered. I’d be curious to see what happens with the established one year MBAs at places like Kellogg and Emory, for example. I would hope, and I would think that those would still maintain, because I would think that the institution itself, I know at Kellogg the one year program is very well integrated, and I know they have a lot of administrative support. So I would assume that that program is probably going to be, hopefully will still be maintained for a long time, because I think it’s an excellent opportunity for the right mean, who knows, who knows what’s going to happen? If you would have said, ok, Maria, Notre Dame is going to announce that they’re shutting down one of their two MBA programs, either the two year or the one year, I would have perhaps thought it’s the two year program. And so it’s just such an interesting times that we live in.

[00:16:03.440] – John

Yeah, definitely true. The other thing that’s happened is we kind of early on named our dean of the year. We did this in conjunction with the Thinkers 50 virtual event that occurred. And the dean of the year is Anne Harrison of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Anne had been a faculty member at Wharton before taking over the job as the host dean about four years ago. And we named her the dean of the year in part because of all the progress that she’s made in a very short time, and particularly over a time when most schools were pretty disrupted because of COVID And it must be said that the University of California is one of the more notoriously slow moving bureaucracies of all universities. And yet, under leadership, in four years, she’s brought in record amounts of fundraising, almost 230,000,000, including the largest single gift, a $30 million gift that Haas has ever received. She’s boosted the size of the faculty by 30% to nearly 100, and tenure and tenure track professors, which is highly unusual because it’s really hard to hire people given the bureaucracy there. And she’s focused primarily on entrepreneurship, sustainability, and diversity and inclusion.

[00:17:31.890] – John

Some 70% of the newly hired faculty are women, which is a big change because she’s been able to basically increase the number of female faculty at the school from 20% to 30%. She’s put a heavy emphasis on sustainability. She’s launched an online option in the part time MBA program. She’s converting the two year undergraduate program into four years, which is really the market preference in the US, so people can have the opportunity to do more internships instead of just one between the junior and senior year. And then she successfully partnered with a lot of other departments and colleges at Berkeley for everything from the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology to the School of Law and Engineering and Journalism to the College of Natural Resources. She’s launched a new joint MBA program in climate solutions. She’s broken ground on a new entrepreneurship hub for the entire university. All this in four years, which is kind of remarkable. So have a look at that. I don’t know if you two have looked at that or are familiar with what Anne Harrison has done, but she’s been a dynamite dean. And the other thing I should point out know she’s still one of the very few women who’ve been able to attain the deanship at a top business school.

[00:19:00.850] – John

Why aren’t there more women in these jobs?

[00:19:03.610] – Maria

Maria, way to throw the easy, I love these softball easy questions that you throw every week is a delight. Really? No, just kidding. I don’t know. Why aren’t there more women? And why aren’t women running the world in general? I think that the path to being a dean of a business school has always had a very prescribed route, just like the path of being a business school faculty has always had a very prescribed route in the past.

[00:19:30.790] – Caroline

Right?

[00:19:31.030] – Maria

You have to have an MBA to become a professor. You have to be a professor. And many times it’s not just enough to be a professor, you then need additional education in administration. There are actually, and I think the dean at Darden may have undertaken this. There’s like a PhD in how to be an administrator at a university. So you need additional training on top of that, usually to be considered qualified for that role. And I think that since, because these are roles that traditionally you need, like maybe, let’s say a 20 year lead time of experience, there’s going to be a lag in terms of the number of women. But fortunately, I think that this dean at Haas, she was a professor for some years. But it looks to me like perhaps Haas was willing to take a bit of a chance on her or perhaps a lot of business schools, I think, are increasingly, both with faculty and with administrators, starting to take a fresher look at identifying talent and putting that talent where it can make a difference. And maybe even if that means sort of getting rid of some of the older norms and requirements that used to be set in.

[00:20:41.290] – John

Mean. And INSEAD, for example, has never had a female dean, why do you think that’s so.

[00:20:47.570] – Caroline

No, I was just thinking about that as the school has just brought in a new dean, Francisco Velozo, who I met at the weekend at my INSEAD reunion, which was great. Yeah. So he seems wonderful. He made a speech to the alumni and I asked around to sort of get a hot take on people’s first impressions, and it was very positive. So he’s only been there for six weeks. So they kind of threw him to the fire by putting him up in front of thousand alumni to make his speech about his vision for INSEAD in the direction he wants to take the school.

[00:21:28.350] – John

Right. Because he’s been dean of two other business schools, the Lisbon School of Business and Economics, as well as Imperial College and business school in London. So he’s got a lot of interesting experience.

[00:21:42.990] – Caroline

He is. And I’m sure that that’s why they’ve brought him in. And I think especially, I think that probably he got it because of his experience in digital and online and the success that he had with launching those programs at Imperial. And INSEAD is looking to continue its digital transformation. And so they’re looking to him to lead that. So, yes, it’s a shame that the school has not yet had a female leader, but perhaps after Francisco that will be, I’m sure they looked for female candidates. Hopefully next time they will line something up. But from my experience, when I was working at INSEAD, faculty was very male dominated, administration was very female dominated, and the deans are always picked from the faculty. And so that has shifted a bit in the past few years. But there is a long way to go to bring through more female candidates. But as we see from the women who are in those dean roles, right. They are pretty damn fantastic. So we need more of them.

[00:22:51.670] – John

And Harvard and Stanford have yet to have a female dean. Of course, Wharton’s current dean is the first woman to lead that school, I predict. And if you want to make a bet, I’ll make a bet with you. Harvard’s next dean will be a woman. What do you think, Maria?

[00:23:12.190] – Maria

I certainly hope so.

[00:23:13.860] – John

I certainly hope so. It’s been a long, and Harvard actually has a number of women on the faculty who would make great deans.

[00:23:26.530] – Maria

Absolutely. Yes, for sure.

[00:23:28.690] – Caroline

Given recent events, perhaps sooner rather than later.

[00:23:32.790] – John

I think that that’s very true as well. Caroline. All right. Boy, hey. We had a really expansive conversation today that started with the decline of the one year MBA program at Notre Dame and Cornell and why and what it meant for the MBA market and the MBA of the future. Then our female dean of the year, Berkeley Haas. And now some speculation about who will the next dean be at Harvard, among other places. So stay tuned. You will find out here first with commentary. Thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
The Future Of The MBA + Our Dean Of The Year
Maria |
October 10, 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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