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MBA: My Big Advantage

MBA as a course helps you understand and achieve global perspective.

An MBA adds actual market place perspective to our graduate degree. It sharpens our image of reality. If your graduate degree gives you a direction to your career, your MBA degree will be a launch pad to the corporate world. An MBA degree is like a finishing school, it makes you ready for the market!

Some have argued that an MBA degree can be viewed as an equalizer. An MBA takes engineers, pharmacists, linguists, accountants and economists, and converts them into managers, thus drumming out heterogeneity and replacing it with a homogeneous people, devoid of any perspective apart from an MBA. In my opinion, an MBA is an enhancer, rather than an equalizer. It takes the economist and makes him into a market ready economist; it takes an accountant and develops in him traits to take on business conditions, and gives an engineer a marketable framework to increase creativity or product efficiency. Thus an MBA betters, rather than changes the basic skill set. In that sense an MBA works to amplify your graduate degree. It works with the knowledge base that you already possess; taking it one step further. Many students have asked me whether graduation really matters, if eventually one plans to take up an MBA. I hope the earlier argument answers this question. Your graduation is of paramount importance, since the MBA builds on that.

So how does an MBA enhance different graduate degrees? Given below is a brief overview:

1. Science graduates: Science observes phenomena and makes theories around them. It trains the student to observe record and analyze. However, it does not teach the students the implications or applications of his/her observations. An MBA degree does just that. It works on the skill of the science student to observe and record and adds to it the ability to apply and imagine.

2. The Engineers: Engineering is a science of possibility and imagination. It takes pure sciences and uses it to create products of great utility. It asks the question: “if this is what it is, what can be made from this?” - An engineer is thus a utility creator. However, engineering works in isolation from the user. In that sense, it can produce something that has utility, but cannot identify to whom it will be useful? How useful will it be? How much will the people be willing to pay for the created utility? If he can answer these questions when creating any product, the product could ease much of people’s efforts. To be able to answer these questions, the engineer needs an introduction to the user. This introduction is provided by an MBA degree, thus, making the engineer a better creator of the utility.

3. The Commerce graduates or Accountants: Accountancy and Commerce are subjects intertwined with the market place. They deal with the operational part of the market: the maintenance of records of market transactions. Thus accountancy and commerce are like reading a travel magazine. The travel magazine describes a destination, say Manasarover on Mount Kailash. It describes how to get there, where to stay, how the place looks, the whether, the food, the people living there, etc. Having read the description, the reader gets a very good idea about the place but it is nowhere close to experience of actually being there. That’s what an MBA degree provides to the commerce graduates. It moves the commerce graduates from reading about the market to actually experiencing its working. Thus it makes his or her theoretical market knowledge come alive!

4. The economist: The economist is the closest to the MBA degree. What pure sciences are to engineering, BA in economics is to an MBA. Pure sciences trace the theory behind the application. For example, it is the fundamentals of light that make an X-ray machine work. The x-ray machine is an application, a child of engineering, but the source of scientific theory. If engineering is a utility creator, an MBA degree is a wealth creator. An MBA degree takes economic laws and applies them to create wealth in the market place.

5. The humanities students: The studies of humanities (history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc) are concerned to trying to understand human beings and why they are the way they are. If history traces the root which mankind has taken to reach where he is, sociology tries to figure out norms that we live by and their origin. Psychology seeks to explain our behaviour in the market place. In other words, it gives the student the ability to explain or understand a single phenomenon based on multidimensional observations it’s like taking a telescope that’s looking at the universe and pointing towards a single galaxy or constellation to understand it better.

Thus, an MBA degree adds precision to the vision provided by the humanities. The biggest take away from this degree is the 360 degree perspective of management. The synergies created by these different aspects like marketing, HR, finance, etc., are critical to business success.

Moreover, an interaction with classmates from varied backgrounds with different perspectives is critical to the development. The ability to examine different view points when making a decision, and the ability to listen, enhances your emotional quotient and people skills.

Of course, the extent of enhancement possible with an MBA degree depends upon the amount you, as a student puts into the course. The greater the input, the greater the reward.

Advantages of MBA:

1. Prepares you for Business Environment: An MBA is a comprehensive course designed to groom one for the business environment. Every subject offered in the course has been specifically chosen to assist in the better understanding of how business run and operate. Industry stalwarts teach the course, making it rich with practical perspectives and real life case studies.

2. Build Confidence to take business decisions: An MBA develops extreme self confidence and awareness of what one is capable f doing and achieving, the feasibility of the time v/s profitability of activities, individual and as a whole.

3. Brings about a global perspective: The world is in a state flux. Geographical boundaries define physical countries, while the internet spans the world. There are no boundaries to businesses and brands have become global and taken on local flavors. MBA as a course helps you understand and achieve global perspective. This is critical, as businesses are no longer facing competition from local players but global giants.

4. Tutors practical skills for everyday life: Unlike many other courses, MBA develops critical thinking skills that can be applied to every facet of life, and this is true no matter what background one comes from.

5. Develops Network: MBA is the best scouting ground for jobs. It provides you with a strong network of fellow graduates, faculty and business leaders who can act as mentors, sounding boards and so much more.

6. Polishes team building skills: No business can run like an Island today. An MBA helps you understand the importance of working in teams, empowering fellow team members as well as learning the capacity of leading a team. The whole course has been designed for team work, which also leads to better understanding of people – a skill that is highly appreciated by almost every organization today.

7. Scales down corporate training budget: As a trainee from an MBA school, one is ready to apply new skills and knowledge to issues facing the organization, from day one. With limited training budgets and even shorter life cycles to get trainees on board, this becomes even more critical as companies aspire to take in trainees who are ready to take on the job from day one.

Pankaj Tawde

Regional Manager IMS Learning Resources Pvt. Ltd cochin@imsindia.com

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