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Scorecard Expert chat: Professor Ed Roberts, MIT Sloan
Ed Roberts came to MIT as a teenager and never left. To say his time here was productive is an understatement. In addition to the four degrees he’s earned and decades of teaching and research this energetic innovator founded and chairs the MIT entrepreneurship centre and co-founded the management of technology program.
His latest accomplishment is the introduction of the entrepreneurship and innovation program. Fondly known as E&I this phenomenally popular element of the MBA program leverages the entrepreneurial ecosystem at MIT and brings the like-minded entrepreneurs together.
The following transcript is part one of two sections taken from an expert chat hosted by Professor Roberts on 24 July 2008, at 1300GMT, on the chat forum at www.topmba.com/scorecard. To attend future expert chats please register for free at the Scorecard website and use the expert chats tab. Questions were posted by MBA candidates from all over the world, a unique opportunity to talk to one of the world’s leading MBA professors.
Q: Entrepreneurship and innovation can't really be taught can they? Surely they are something you're born with?
A: Let’s start with your point. I am sure there must be some things that effective entrepreneurs are either born with, or far more likely grow up with. For example, high need for achievement, a willingness to share power and collaborate with others as part of getting ahead. But there is such variation among successful entrepreneurs that their accomplishments can’t all be laid to birth or upbringing. Much more needs to be learned somehow, and some of what needs to be learned can be taught. Football coaches are not likely to be able to play as well as their star team members. But they coach and help develop the skills and capabilities of their team. Tiger Woods is a spectacular golfer, but he has a coach and a trainer who help to enhance his winning ways. The Williams sisters fought it out in the finals at Wimbledon, but their mother and father who are their coaches sat in the stands, not looking like they could last a set. I’ll get back to some of the things I believe we can and do teach to aspiring entrepreneurs. These are the bases for our new MIT Sloan entrepreneurship & innovation (E&I) MBA program which we started three years ago and now has close to 30% of the entering MBAs as participants.
Q: I believe that entrepreneurship, like leadership, can be taught, but only partially and that a person needs certain intrinsic qualities to become a good entrepreneur or a good leader. Please comment.
A: You and I are on the same track. First we need to recognize that far more entrepreneurs fail than succeed. So many different kinds of people attempt entrepreneurship. Twice as many who come from homes in which one of the parents was an entrepreneur are likely to make the attempt. But when you say “good entrepreneurs”, whom I would say are “effective or successful entrepreneurs”, we are discussing a much smaller fraction of the lot. By the way, if we limit ourselves to technology-related entrepreneurs, about 30% become successes, far more than the rate for non-technical entrepreneurs. Another incidental comment is that parents as entrepreneurs only produce more entrepreneurs, not more successes than those from other home environments. As I indicated in my previous answer, our research has uncovered very few individual traits that correlate well with an entrepreneur’s success: high need to achieve, and moderate need for power are personality orientations that matter. But it turns out that teams of co-founding entrepreneurs are far more likely to succeed than solo entrepreneurs. And those teams bring a wide variety of complementary experiences and skills, not just personalities.
Q: Yes entrepreneurship and leadership can be taught to level. I feel entrepreneurship is a phenomenon of the will whereas innovation is a phenomenon of the wisdom. So if you have the will and want wisdom to be working towards driving the path for that will, you are bound to create results.
