The End of the MBA is Nigh!

Creativity, design and innovation are today's real success tools

I am fundamentally, at some level, offended by the notion of "Master of Administration." I guess I shouldn't be offended. It was probably a damn good idea 40 or 50 years ago. I remember reading the story of the "Whiz Kids," who helped win World War II, and then turned around Ford. Robert S. McNamara, Ford President, then Defense Secretary, was the Whiz-iest of the kids. What he discovered was that the U.S. Army Air Force didn't know how many planes they had. And so he counted the planes. And it helped. A lot. And then he went to Ford. And he pretty much found out that they didn't have any idea how many cars they'd made. And so he counted up the cars. AND THINGS GOT BETTER. So there was a time when doing those "basics" . . . countin' the planes, countin' the cars . . . made . . . no doubt . . . ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

But after 60 or 70 years of the MBA . . . we count the cars and the planes pretty damn well. And besides, the microprocessor is counting them a lot faster than the graduates of Harvard & Stanford & Wharton. The stuff that used to be "special" has become routine. And the stuff that's necessary (as I see it) . . . The Big Three . . . creativity - design - innovation . . . have been blithely ignored by the business schools!

Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor (I guess they get two things right - Enriquez and Christensen), wrote a well-received book called The Innovator's Dilemma. He chided business for its conservatism. (He might as well have chided Harvard!) "Good management," he began, "was the most powerful reason [leading firms] failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms listened to their [biggest & most conservative] customers, invested aggressively in technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership."

That's a helluva condemnation! And I buy it.

Blog editor's note: Tom Peters, called "business's best friend and worst nightmare" by BusinessWeek, is one of the preememinent business gurus of our time. Used with permission. For more information, visit www.tompeters.com.

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