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You can’t teach that! Can you...?
Ross Geraghty talks to Prof Ed Roberts of MIT Sloan about Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Business Schools...and Babe Ruth.
It’s one of the more controversial aspects of business school, leading some commentators to suggest that it’s an oxymoron. Can a top business school really teach entrepreneurship? Isn’t innovation something that you either have or don’t? If you do possess an entrepreneurial spirit, isn’t it better to spend the next 12-24 months developing your skills in the real world than sitting in lecture rooms listening to people who, were they able to do it themselves, surely would be?
According to one of the world’s leading academics in the field of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I) and the man who set up the E&I Centre at MIT’s Sloan School of Business, there is a definite role for business school in developing the skillsets of entrepreneurs and innovators. Not only that, Professor Ed Roberts says, being an academic does not mean that you don’t get your hands dirty in the ‘real’ business world. Far from it.
“I have been involved in nine or ten companies including a venture capital firm, and been a founder role in a lot of those firms,” he says. In a career spanning almost five decades Prof. Roberts has also been a board member of almost 20 companies, both public and private, and has worked with entrepreneurial spirits on several occasions. All the time he has stayed close to the academic side of his work.
“I worked with start-ups where there was one entrepreneur and nobody else, to boards of companies that have several thousand employees trading on NASDAC. In addition I am a real academic, so I read the research done by colleagues all over the world, I look at the theory and the empirical evidence that people are pulling together. I can combine the theory and empirical research with the practise and deliver that to students.”
Prof. Roberts knows what he is talking about. With almost half a century of academic expertise behind him – Prof. Roberts began at MIT Sloan in 1961 - he has seen generations of business aspirants come and go through the system at this esteemed business school. In addition he is the most recent winner of the Monosson Prize for Entrepreneurship Mentoring, a prize he respects and holds dear.
“As part of MIT for almost 50 years, I personally have become very actively involved in a lot of different things, building programs, educational research, personally engaging in entrepreneurial activities outside of MIT, and so on. As an internal counsellor, mentor and coach I’ve done a lot of work with student teams and groups. Essentially it’s the cumulative of that for which I was recognized of being awarded the prize.”
Despite the immense range of activities he has undertaken, it is the mentoring that gives Prof. Roberts the most satisfaction. “The most enjoyable part is working with young nascent teams, helping them, guiding them, criticizing to do their own thing and it has been very rewarding. We have had and continue to have some amazing students at MIT.”
As for the million dollar question: Can Entrepreneurship be taught? Prof. Roberts laughs as he considers this perennial conundrum: “That’s an excellent question. My answer is that some aspects can be taught. Consider Babe Ruth (the American baseball legend). Even he had a batting coach. His coach didn’t break the league records in home runs but he was a skilled and trained observer and could comment, suggesting ‘raise your elbow,’ or ‘you need a different weighted bat,’ or ‘strengthen your wrists’. One thing about entrepreneurship is that there are many opportunities for that form of experience or observation-based coaching and helping in all aspects of entrepreneurship.
“There are a series of skills that entrepreneurs do need, which are teachable. Launching a business involves considerations of finance, market, organization, strategy, technology, and intellectual property. The third thing you can teach is prior experience. Is doesn’t mean you are lecturing that ‘this is great and this is bad,’ but you are exposing alternative models and the outcomes of them. In entrepreneurship, by being able to call out how different companies have approached different types of issues where there may not be a clear answer as to what’s best, you’re doing some mind expanding. That can be done as a part of teaching entrepreneurship.”
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