Conventional B-School curricula are broken and irrelevant for the most part.

We didn’t make this up. It has been pointed out by some of the insiders of the B-School world—Henry Mintzberg, Warren Bennis, James O’Toole. For independents, entrepreneurs and small shops of designers and developers, subjects like Human Resource Management, Supply Chain Management, Management Information Systems, Organizational Behavior, Management Communication, Operations, etc. are absolutely worthless. These subjects may be relevant for large firms (and even that’s not a definite) with lumbering bureaucracies, but they’re irrelevant to small tribes moving quickly across the savanna.

Since we spend so much time criticizing business education we thought we’d better provide an alternative. Otherwise we’re just whining, right…?

We identified 4 subject areas around which an emerging business agenda takes shape. These subject areas are important for everyone who is in business—whether it is as an independent or as a forward thinking general manager.  You find some of these subjects in a traditional MBA.  In our opinion, the others need to become part of a traditional MBA.  The subject areas are:

• Finance
• Marketing/Strategy
• Design
• Sustainability
• People

Our interest here is to connect people with current, granular learning moments (drawn from the daily, weekly and monthly drip of the business press) and with each other. Our Syllabi, which we intend to add to roughly once a week, link to articles around these four areas. We hope that you will suggest your own links, articles and comments.

Please proceed to Not a B-School Syllabus #1.

The NotAnMBA Editors