Starting a business or getting an MBA?

Getting involved in small business, you get involved in marketing, you get involved in accounting, you get involved in strategy and you get involved in sales, it goes without saying that you get involved in public relations.

We all know you don't need to have an MBA to start a business, there are no legal requirements and plenty of people are engaged in small business enterprises without university qualifications. So should a person take on the effort and expense of this post-graduate qualification?

Firstly we need to look at age, current earning potential, time lost from work, opportunity cost and tuition fees. Then we need to take a good hard look at the school offering the MBA qualification, its reputation, quality of instruction offered and entrepreneurial programs the institution offers.

The younger you are, the more opportunity you have to earn the costs back but this is counteracted by the less management experience encountered. The reputation of the institution is important insofar as venture capitalists are attracted, industry experts brought in and the mentoring potential in terms of quality of industry experts.

In an entrepreneurial business venture, the development of ideas that are peer reviewed in venture labs by students, industry experts and faculty staff. One imagines a through analysis allows review of the idea will result in reworking the plan to get exciting ideas off the ground.

The Stanford Venture Studio and their Startup Garage, INSEAD's Centre for Entrepreneurship and the IE Business School Area 31 are programs  Stanford's venture lab holds weekly meetings with business founders, venture capitalists, industry experts and faculty staff to develop new ideas.

Business plans are developed from prototypes, value creation is analysed and the idea tested and peer reviewed with input from faculty members and industry experts. The current crop of start-up businesses revolve around e-commerce and developing online platforms.

A number of leading universities are strongly promoting entrepreneurship as coursework opening labs where ideas are floated and refined. If you have a good idea and you peer review the business plan with input from industry experts, you could easily seek a return on the investment far exceeding the opportunity cost of staying employed.