Education
many cases, they were in fact the ones who opened up international trading markets. Perhaps the most famous Pirate of the Caribbean of them all, Welshman Captain Morgan, was even knighted for his role in establishing Jamaica as an English crown colony at the expense of the Spanish. Strictly speaking Morgan was a privateer, not a pirate. Privateers were legalised mercenaries who were allowed to attack enemy ships in exchange for some of the spoils. Most eighteenth century pirates were disgruntled former merchant navy sailors who tired of the inequality based on class origin and a working atmosphere best described as “the flogging will continue until morale improves”. As rejects who wanted to show there was another more inclusive way, pirates ships were much more democratic places to work. For example, decision making was open and booty captured after a raid was fairly distributed. As Philips explains, this allowed for a much more innovative and daring way to carry out missions, using faster, smaller ships or attacking at night. They were proud to be pirates and never tired of exposing the hypocrisy of their so called betters, who generally behaved in much more dastardly and underhand ways while wrapped in the flag of the sovereign.
Stone Soup
Whether they realise it yet or not, all business schools will need to place entrepreneurship at its core. Not in the sense of celebrating entrepreneurs as edgy mavericks or bright young things, but by weaving them into a curriculum based on the thinking that is behind doing something new. So getting all ‘enterpreneury’ is not just about providing an incubator option for your students, but also to include hither to no-no’s, such as the study of failure. Unless you create it for yourself, the job for life is gone now and even if you have always aspired to be a corporate drone, you will need to know how to interact with the start-up ecosystem. Not everyone has to be a founder, as founders also need feeders (VCs, Legal, and M&A). Feeders are all welcome to the ecosystem, not least as customers. Within large
34 entrepreneurcountry
bureaucratic organisations, thinking like an entrepreneur can give you the edge required to get things done. The metaphor of Stone Soup, a favourite of U.S. Army General Patton, is classic entrepreneurial device to
acquire
resources in the face of reluctance from superiors.
This is quite a change, as the very attraction of Business schools has traditionally been stability and an entry ticket into a world of certainty. The need to get people to act in a very different way was certainly the thinking behind the Owners and Entrepreneurs Management Program (OEMP) at the IE Business School, where I´m now the Executive Director. Where once upon a time Activity Based Costing or Balanced Scorecards were about as exciting an MBA got, they are hardly revolutionary. These days, a thorough understanding of concepts such as Singularity, Social Media & Mobile Technology (SoLoMo), Disruptive Innovation, Gamification, Lean Canvas and The Third Industrial Revolution are near requirements to compete. For owners and entrepreneurs looking to grow sales, many executive education courses remain too geared toward middle management and joining an
incubator is like going back to school. So courses like the OEMP, with both off line and residential periods, are the new way to go from good to great.
My apologies if that was like a
commercial, but as the saying goes, if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. The point stands that there are many, many people like me who combine working in an actual start- up with a role in the classroom. That is to say we are baking the prosperity pie, not just slicing it. Business schools were justifiability criticised in the aftermath of the “Too Big to Fail” Financial Crisis of producing nothing but epic destroyers of value. While Advanced Financial Engineering has not been completely replaced with Corporate Social Responsibility, the great dogma that was Shareholder Value is now largely in retreat. We´re not there yet, but in the future the measure of a top business school will not be how many of its graduates now work on Wall Street or in The City, but how many companies they have gone on to start. So there’s a new emphasis on creating jobs, paying taxes and improving life for all. Sustainability, protest and transparency are the new watchwords. Are you on board?
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