According to the findings of the Global Management Education Graduate Survey 2011, conducted by the mba.com, management education availed at the business schools help the candidates with entrepreneurial drive, by instilling in them the important managerial virtues such as market research, decision making skills, financial projection and management etc.

Well, it is not at all easy being an entrepreneur. It takes more than grit, determination, passion, ability to strategize and make decisions and innovation. Above all, it requires patience, a sound knowledge of the target customer base, market dynamics in the particular industry in a particular region and belief in one’s products and services. Though only 5% of the class of 2011 expressed interest in starting their own entrepreneurial venture, the consensus on the importance of business school education in sharpening one’s managerial skills was clear and profound.

Being an entrepreneur is about believing one’s capability in bringing about a change, doing regular things in different and more efficient way, in being innovative, as the 31 percent of the self-employed graduates of the class of 2011 confirmed. They were rather proud of referring to themselves as the ‘innovators’ poised to bring about the much desired changes in the way things worked across various industries.

The importance of business school MBA, full time or executive, is not lost on the current crop of aspiring entrepreneurs who interestingly developed their business idea on their current job and went on to graduate with a degree in MBA, before going ahead with their venture idea. The Importance of Graduate Business Education for Business Owners can be gauzed from the graph given below (courtesy: mba.com)

In its annual survey of business school alumni, the mba.com found that approximately 27% to 28% alumni from different business schools own and manage multiple companies with multinational focus. The most impressive finding was perhaps the fact, that almost 41 percent of respondents reported the revenue of more than $250,000 in the year 2010, when the world economy was still trying to come out of the grips of recession.