An innovator’s MBA: BSchools are helping students build their own businesses
Wahiba Chair is a Vancouver-based entrepreneur who has merged healthy living and technology. “We develop mobile software for healthy lifestyles on the go,” says Ms. Chair. Her company, PortaLife Solutions, Inc., is preparing to launch its first product: CarrotLines, a mobile application that will allow users to identify food products that meet their lifestyle and nutritional needs while they are in the grocery aisle. “Users create a profile on the website, download the software from the site to their cellphones, go to the store, pick up a product and the application will state whether the product meets their profile.”
CarrotLines is currently in beta testing and Ms. Chair has identified the iPhone as her application’s first target platform. She is a few months away from launching and she credits the MBA program at Simon Fraser University with helping her launch her company.
“I was an engineer and had no business skills when I entered the program in 2007,” says Ms. Chair. “I had a vision for my company but I did not have a refined product. I was able to tailor the courses to allow me to refine my concept and take it into a viable business. My thesis was a 100-page business plan for PortaLife.”
Simon Fraser University’s one-year MBA program is one of an emerging group of MBAs focused on innovation and entrepreneurship. Business Schools are adjusting to a new business reality, one where small business is in fact big business and innovation and entrepreneurialism are increasingly becoming the catalyst to future job creation.
“As recently as 10 or 15 years ago, universities could not spell entrepreneurship,” says Steve Farlow, executive director, Schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. “You used to see all the MBAs headed for Bay Street or Wall Street, into the financial services — not any more. There is a next generation of MBA student that is focused on the entrepreneurial segment of the economy and that includes owning, operating and building businesses. The schools are highly driven to create new course content with a mixture of academic strength and strong support from leading practitioners. That is a huge difference in MBA land. Today, entrepreneurship is a very legitimate area within most universities.”
According to Hugh Munro, MBA director and professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, two things are happening.
“The traditional career is being disrupted because of the nature of the workplace and the corporate world itself going through transformation,” says Mr. Munro. “We used to look at someone who had multiple jobs negatively. In today’s world people are looking to create a portfolio of skills they can migrate across different organizations or parlay into their own business.”
To that end, Laurier’s MBA has an innovation and entrepreneurship option. “We’ve positioned for two types of individuals: those who have an idea for their own business and want to nurture it along and those who would like to work with an entrepreneurial firm where they will do a multitude of tasks and experience what it’s like to grow a small business,” says Mr. Munro.
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