Reproduced from a Quora Answer by me here . There are many possible answers to this question depending upon what stage of life you are in - just graduating, within 5 years of work experience, beyond 5 years etc.; and whether you plan to get a good job or want to start on your own. I will provide the most generic answer here and refer you to few blog posts of mine for variations of it for different scenarios. What value does an MBA provide: Network : As you go forward in life, you will realize that success depends on what kind of people you are connected to who can help in climbing the ladder of success. For example, as an entrepreneur, your company requires to connect to stakeholders - customers who buy your product / service, service providers who can feed into your product with minimal cost, investors who provide funding etc. Similarly, in a job, if you are connected to your superiors, you get more opportunities to excel and play a more impactful role. An MBA gets you that

One of the most popular posts on this blog has been this one , co-authored by me and Shubham while we were still students at NITIE. Even after 10 years, the post has stood the test of time and continues to guide new aspirants to take a right decision choosing between taking up a placement offer vs. going for an MBA. This post however is dated and also leaves some key questions unanswered. One such question is as to what is the ideal work experience prior to an MBA. One visitor to this blog asked me this question on email and while I was replying to him, I realized that the answer may benefit several others who visit this blog. Hence reproducing a generalized summary of my reply to the reader here. If you look at it from perspective of jump in salary that you get before and after an MBA , then, the earlier you do an MBA, the better it is. For example, if you are a fresher, as an engineer you'll end up with a package of 3-4 Lakhs, while after an MBA may be 6-8 Lakhs. If you

Management  = Art + Science Management is the Science of converting business activities into measurable inputs and the art of converting management theories into mathematical equations (read: business models), in order to predict outputs of such activities with reasonable accuracy and reliability. Management is application of scientific methods to business situations. Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Management is the process of dealing with or controlling things or people Management is finding a convoluted way of arriving at the same results which otherwise can be arrived by heuristic capabilities of experienced professionals. Management is the art of faffing so as to make 'hunches' look like scientifically derived results. Management is the art of (mis)leading the workforce into believing that there is a

More than an year ago during an internal Training, my friend (also colleague @ KPMG) Glyn demonstrated a very simple example for 'books of accounts' namely the balance sheet, P/L statement, Daily Cash book etc. I found it the most effective way to teach accounts to someone new. The sheet has remained on my desktop since then. I am putting this sheet on my blog for other's to view. The sheet is publicly shared on Google Docs - many Thanks to Glyn for this sheet ...

Found this awsome list of statements on motivating employees here . people don't do what you tell them to do; they do what gets them a reward positive reinforcement is the most effective way to motivate people [Note that in a technology company, a reinforcer might be the freedom to spend some time working on a side project or a pet feature; reinforcement is broader than money or praise; it can be anything that the employee values.] reinforcement works best when it is immediate, certain, and frequent (Daniels points out that kids that our public schools diagnose as having an ADD learning disability are able to concentrate for hours playing video games that provide 85 positive reinforcements per minute) reinforcement doesn't work if followed up with a "but, you need to improve X, Y, Z" monthly reinforcement only provides 12 opportunities per year to shape someone's performance; weekly is the minimum (the annual review and bonus is a joke, as far as Daniels is concer

Continued from previous posts [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] While my point on the US culture and subsequent responses, has anyway addressed a lot, Prof Prasad's take on Indian society is worth mentioning.  I feel - what is there in USA we cannot (in economic terms) provide in India. And even if you provide all those things which are in USA to the Indian audience, we cannot achieve the results what US achieved with their method, because we are different on many other things. We are culturally and socially different compared to USA. There people work, People tell and do the same things, there is no inheritance of wealth, youth are made to work. In such a system the VC system works.  Let me now come to what India is when compared to USA on enterprising front. In India, the social system is [built on] spoon feeding. 45 year olds are controlled and mentored by their elders. Till 30 years [of age] there is complete dependence on the parents. Parents want to continue the dependence syndrome even furt

Continued from previous posts [ 1 ], [ 2 ] I feel that entrepreneurs are born with it and they can only be provided the right opportunities. Such opportunities are available to a lot of people in the US - opportunities like  Universities which will allow you to stay in the hostel, not attend classes, but work on your ideas People who are ready to give you a pocket money to run your life while you are busy burning midnight oil in a garage working on your startup Proper funding when you see a business rise beyond the curve Unfortunately, we don't have such things in India.  Note that even in the US, its is not specific courses - definitely not MBA courses - which have churned out entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs have come out of regular courses on software engineering or energy research or aviation technology or plain accounting or commerce (Steve Jobbs & Bill Gates).  But what has differentiated such courses from similar ones in India is the prevailing culture of the institutions th

Continued from previous post Conversely, I realize that entrepreneurship requires skills which come in very cheap and are not exactly "business related". Business skills (imparted in MBA courses) are required in entrepreneurship way down the curve when your business idea/company has already survived a couple of winters. For example if you want to start something in software - you need to basically know coding and stuff like that; if you want to start something in energy - you need to know the technical details behind that. One doesn't need to know accounting methods or Investment management or Supply Chain principles when one is in startup mode. So here is the dilemma which needs to be dealt with when it comes to "education for entrepreneurship". The basic skills for entrepreneurship are not difficult to learn - and the soft skills for entrepreneurs are more intrinsic than those which can be taught. So, how can education make or break an entrepreneur?  In my opi

One of my NITIE professors, Prof. T Prasad has been working on promoting student enterprise in the country. Work done by Prof Prasad [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ video ] is really commendable - especially given the lack of support such initiatives receive in this country, from student and faculty alike.  I and another alumnus,  Rohit Tripathy , recently had an email discussion with him on the subject of Entrepreneurship education - here's what came out of it.  Apathy in B-schools towards Entrepreneurship It is absolutely true that there are few jobs at this in time. Still, MBAs are waiting for recruiters to reject them rather than try their luck in their own ventures. Prof Prasad recently met 2 students from a B-school who won B-plan at another B-school with intent of commercializing innovations. However, when asked, students said that purpose of this b-plan participation was to win it; they were not concerned with entrepreneurship at all. B-Plan Competitions and other "networking" eve

MBA's usually learn about Theory X:Theory Y methods of management. Over the last 3 years in corporate world I have seen similar two opposite styles of business development at work - I christen them "Theory A: Theory B" style of business. Theory A A manager who believes that new business is the best business and getting business is his most important priority. Such managers tend to paint a very rosy picture of their company / team / work in front of a new client. They also tend to over-commit. Though not as a rule, but as a corollary, such managers tend to pay very little attention to work (projects / deliverables etc) when its comes to delivery / execution. Thus they tend to over-commit and under perform, resulting in low repeat business. However, their future pipelines are usually so full of work that they are hardly ever bothered or worried by the lack of repeat business. Theory B A manager who believes that repeat business is the best form of business and hence his fo

“Morons! I know there’s nothing out there. That’s why I want to build the railroad!” – Dean Kamen, on J.P. Morgan’s hypothetical response to two non-hypothetical M.B.A.’s hypothetical objections to J.P.’s railroad Code Name Ginger Link Via: Nivi

Well ... here is another view from my window - this one is towards the right ... Click on the image to enlarge .. if it is not yet explicit enough - I have been spending quite some time in front of my window lately :-)

Click Image to Enlarge Description of the View Leftmost white building - ' The Renaissance ', Smaller Building between the two white buildings : ' The Residence ' Under Construction : New wing of 'The Renaissance' Yellow Buildings among the greenery : NITIE Hostel and Academic building White 'stepped' building on the right: New Hostel, IIT Bombay Water Body: Powai Lake Greenery near the horizon: Parts of Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Borivali

You can take me out of NITIE. But you can never take NITIE out of me. - Shubham Choudhury* I could not help but (re)post this comment made by Shubham on my previous post. By the way, Junta! I am going to go be in a nomadic life for the next 15 days, so might not be able to post :( References * Choudhury, Shubham; URL: http://my-mind-space.blogspot.com Born July 19, 1980; NITIE, PGDIM-X, Class of 2005 Co-Creator: Arbit Choudhury - World's First B-school comic character

Shubham and me compiled and created an article during our first year of MBA. It was never published, nevertheless MBA aspirants will find it very useful. Publishing it online for the same purpose. However, Shubham and myself claim a copyright on the text .... and of course very many thanks to all our freinds whose views have helped us compile the article. Experienced vs. Freshers – an MBA perspective By Nikhil Kulkarni, KPMG Shubham Choudhury, Infosys PGDIM- X, NITIE, Mumbai Ashita Mittal was placed during her final year in engineering college with a leading software firm. But she never wanted to be another brick in the wall. She wanted to differentiate herself from other graduates who start their career at the lowest rung of organizational hierarchy. MBA was a natural choice for her. On the other side is Shailesh Dhawla, who worked as a software engineer with a leading software consultancy firm for 3 years. He started his job with some ends in mind, like working with a known company,

I must make a confession! Throughout my NITIE life I was of the opinion that MBA was merely an exercise to segregate the smart ones from the lot and B-schools are merely providing placement services to students and selection services to companies. But I WAS WRONG ! As much as MBA studies seem useless and hot air while you are in the institute - their impact is visible only after you join the industry. I always felt that engineering had a more 'learning' content but MBA too has a lot of content. I have been spending time doing information audits and helping the financial audit team at KPMG as an IRM expert (?? IRM? Expert?) since the past 3-4 days. The reason why I could solve their issues, more than my knowledge of systems, was my knowledge of business. It is the business knowledge acquired during MBA that helped my relate which IT system could and in what manner and to what extent affect the financial statement of the company. Terms like BOM (Bill Of Materials) which the Audit

So there was I roaming around in Pune 2 days before my NITIE interview. Still ignorant about NITIE's ranking (careless chap u would say. . . well my teachers till date say the same) wasn't very keen on getting into it. The interview was cooooooool . . .rather than narrate it here let me refer you to my old webpage [ http://kulkarninet.tripod.com/tscript.htm ] . And so I found myself on the NITIE final list. It was now that I finally cared to find out NITIE's ranking and finding it in the top 10 ended up joining. I still feel I was lucky to be at the right places at the right times, more importantly surrounded by the right people. Talking of luck, even my summer placement was similar. I was very conservative while applying to companies - being a hard core IT guy - on Day 0, I had just one shortlist - went to the GD, cleared it, proceeded to the interview cleared it again. Just one shortlist, one GD, one interview and summers was through . . . Man!! I should say I am lucky.

Its 1st January - the new year has just started and for me with placements round the corner and NITIE life coming to an end, the new year will indeed usher in a new beginning. I was reading Manish Chauhan's Blog [ http://manishchauhan.blogspot.com/ ] and found his recent posts about friends and his lucky-and-intelligent friend Timir quite near to what's going on in my own mind nowadays; so thought why not pen it down(rather type it down). As NITIE comes to an end I am reflecting to around 1 1/2 years back. I was never gung-ho about management as a career path, actually had thought about giving GRE and doing an MS. My father kept on pursuing with me to try for an MBA rather than a techie thing - but I always thought I was made to be a techie (dunno why?). He tried for 3 years before he could succeed. It was March and he was (I could guess) tired of trying to change my mind about MS. Both of us were standing on the railway station; I was leaving back for my college after Holi

I joined NITIE a week later than my batchmates because I was yet to finish my final engineering exams. By the time I joined, the committees had been formed and elections/selections were over. So in spite of will I was left out of all committees. I hadn't even dreamt that I would be involved with any activity leave alone placement of all. Then slowly I started working - to start with it was ITS (our IT/Tech forum- now TechnoMatrix) and along the way proposed 'Online Games', which went on to become MastishK - and that was where I made a success out of a seemingly impossible task; but that's another story. Click the links below to read my posts about MastishK ['Entreplayer','MastishK Credits' and 'It must be a tough job to be a CEO!'] ( http://the-complete-man.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_the-complete-man_archive.html http://the-complete-man.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_the-complete-man_archive.html ) In January we had some reorganisation in our placement a

What prospect of winning the cricket tournament does a team, which had won just 1 out of 16 matches for the past 16 months, hold? Nil, I would have said just 8 hours ago . . . but today has been a lesson in my life . . . Grit, Determination and Passion always work, irrespective of what historical data suggests! The IM10 cricket team had been a losing team all through our NITIE life, so much so that ‘Did we win?’ had become more of a rhetorical question after every match. No-one . . . which includes me . . . believed that IM10 could win even a single match, leave alone wining the tournament. The junior teams of IM11 and IE34 had come up to be much better than ours which anyway hadn’t won last year itself. Then one day I heard something about George – our dear friend from ISEM3 being involved, I didn’t know where? I had thought they were talking on him to be an umpire or something. But soon I was to discover that he was taken in the team as a wicketkeeper . . dunno if that made any dif