Where are the Young Entrepreneurs? And Other MBA News Snippets

By Tim Dhoul Updated Jan 05, 2015

Save

Introduction
Number of young entrepreneurs in the US reaches 24-year low
London Business School gifted with new research institute
IIMs to overcome technicality and award MBA degrees
Video featuring HBS’s Clayton Christensen angers atheists

Have you read the latest Global 200 Business Schools Report yet?

Number of young entrepreneurs in the US reaches 24-year low

Young entrepreneurs in the US are scarcer than they have been in 24 years, according to a new analysis of Federal Reserve data from 2013 carried out by the Wall Street Journal.

Just 3.6% of households headed by adults under the age of 30 were found to own stakes in private companies. The analysis suggests that the financial challenges of previous years has made potential young entrepreneurs more risk averse.

However, those who might go on to make up the US’s next wave of young entrepreneurs may have since become MBA graduates or current business school attendees.

MBA students at several top business schools in the US are increasingly interested in entrepreneurial course options, according to Fortune. Accordingly, many more of these courses are now available.

With schools also reporting rises in the number of graduates moving straight into new startup enterprises, the paucity of young entrepreneurs found by the Wall Street Journal could be set for an upturn in the near future.

London Business School gifted with new research institute

London Business School is set to receive £10 million (c. US$15 million) over the next 10 years from US hedge fund, AQR Capital, to operate a new investment research institute, according to a report in the Financial Times.

The AQR Institute of Asset Management at London Business School, which will also hold an annual conference, will look to blend academic research with real-life industry practices, with early projects planned in active fund management and portfolio construction.

AQR, which opened a London office just three years ago, has been looking to raise its profile in Europe – where it currently manages less money than it does in Australia. But, London Business School has been quick to assert that its new institute will enjoy full independence on research.

IIMs to overcome technicality and award MBA degrees

It looks like the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will finally be able to award MBA degrees, after government legislature that has been years in the making can now be presented as a bill before parliament.

A long-standing technicality has lain behind the fact that India’s 13 IIMs (with more now in the pipeline) awards a postgraduate diploma (PGDM) as the exact equivalent of two-year MBA degrees in India. The chief beneficiaries, therefore, will be IIM alumni looking to continue their career abroad and who will no longer need to obtain an IIM certificate detailing the diploma’s MBA equivalency in India.

Under the terms of the new bill, to which only minor changes are expected to be made, the IIMs will fall under a system of council governance akin to that of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), but with IIM representatives retaining a greater say than politicians. The government, however, would be allowed to remove an IIM director from their post for incompetence.

Video featuring HBS’s Clayton Christensen angers atheists

The appearance of Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School’s (HBS) acclaimed professor, in a video discussing religious freedom finds itself at the center of a row with atheists in the US.

In the video, the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, recounts the experience of a Marxist economist visiting the US on a Fulbright fellowship from China to imply that religious organizations play an essential role in providing us with a moral compass, and that their waning influence in contemporary life could negatively impact upon democracy and the adherence to law in the US. The video has been available on YouTube since at least March 2014.

However, American Atheists – a group that campaigns for the complete separation of church and state in the US - are now seeking an apology from Jack Hawkins, chancellor of Alabama’s Troy University, after he emailed Clayton Christensen’s video appearance to his students and staff as part of an end-of-year message on December 31.

The group says it received complaints from students at Troy University and, according to AL.com, wants Hawkins to apologize for backing the suggestion that atheists might be “anti-democracy and antisocial members of society.”

The latest Gallup survey on the number of people deemed “very religious” in the US holds that Alabama is the country’s third most religious state, after Mississippi and Utah – which is where Clayton Christensen hails from. The HBS professor is open about his Mormon faith and lists his experience serving as a missionary in the Republic of Korea between 1971 and 1973 on his personal website.

Written by

Tim Dhoul

Tim is a writer with a background in consumer journalism and charity communications. He trained as a journalist in the UK and holds degrees in history (BA) and Latin American studies (MA).