MBA or non-MBA...what's the difference?

by mbaswithoutborders | April 13, 2007 at 10:19 pm

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This was a great week! We began recruiting for 8 new positions in Colombia, Haiti, Mali, Nicaragua, Nepal, Timor-Leste and Ukraine that will start in the next 4-5 months and last anywhere from 3-6 months. Projects vary from providing Venture Capital technical support to building the income-generation capabilities of local women to understanding the energy needs and how business can play and active role in a particular country.

As we continue to post new positions it is encouraging to see the number of MBAs applying, literally from all parts of world to our projects. MBAs really do want to do amazing things… I love it!

With all the great news from MBAs…the early success of our program has encountered many challenges, one of which I will highlight today. While we receive countless applications from MBAs, we also receive, sometimes just as many inquiries, from very qualified non-MBA individuals.

When we created MBAs Without Borders in September ‘04, to be honest, it is not that Michael and I believed MBAs had some kind of super power that could cure all business problems with their lightning fast accounting skills or Popeye-like business plans. Frankly, while at DeGroote, we just did not see any opportunities around the world for MBAs to do something different…internationally…in developing countries.

We knew about Net Impact (www.netimpact.org), which is a phenomenal program that involves over 12,000 MBAs across the globe in social responsibility, however there was nothing that was enabling any and all MBAs to get physically involved in international development. Again, we knew about other business volunteers groups (CESO, VSO, Australian Business Volunteers, etc) but we just did not feel they were leveraging the skills of MBAs to their fullest or at all.

So here we are today…our niche of focusing on MBAs has also become something we are constantly asked to revisit. Last week, we posted our first non-MBA, Ms. Melany Markham, who is currently in Cambodia working with Carpets for Communities. She really was the best person for the job and though Melany has a Masters in Marketing from the Melbourne School of Business, a very strong program, this was not an easy decision; we wanted to stay with recruiting only MBAs and were nervous at derailing from this. I am happy to say Melany is exemplifying the ‘wow’ factor of our MBAs and I could not be happier that we made the decision we did.

However, I still will say this…this was a special case and moving forward we will stay firm and only allow MBAs to apply, because after all…it is… “MBAs” Without Borders.

I have been doing a lot of thinking and not taking anything away from non-MBAs, there is a difference between people that have a MBA and people that do not. It is not a ‘better’ quality or anything like that, but more so that MBAs hold a common language. It is understanding each other when we are talking about accounting, finance, operations, marketing, human resource, etc. Though our MBAs come from different schools, we were all trained on the same philosophy of ideas and as such when MBAs Without Borders has a project, I can know with confidence, the job will get done as needed by any MBA we send. As such….we are going to stick to our niche…stick to what we know…MBAs.

There might be other parts of our future business that we incorporate non-MBAs into our work (e.g. CIDER…our upcoming online social network connecting MBAs/business people with entrepreneurs in developing countries - due out in Summer, 07) but our mission and vision is bringing MBAs to developing countries to build better businesses and NGOs. This is our mandate, this is our way forward, and this is who we are…MBAs Without Borders.