My Year in MBET Condensed into 1:58

I’ve been asked countless times over the past year about my Master’s program at the University of Waterloo, and what exactly we did in the program. Often, people immediately think….MBA? Well, not quite.

As the MBET program enters it’s eighth year (or version 8.0 as us MBETers like to refer to it as) the program is very much still in it’s infancy. Building a name and a reputation not only domestically but internationally takes time. So it’s understandable if people aren’t quite familiar with the program, and how unique it really is.

I usually begin by telling people that MBET differs from an MBA in several ways, but most importantly ‘MBETers learn to create, while MBA’s learn to manage‘. While that’s not always true of all MBA programs (cue the angry emails from MBA students), it’s generally applicable to most programs.

MBET – Where Ideas Come to Life

While it may not always be fair to say that MBA’s are always taught to manage, it’s simply the best way to contrast what we do in the MBET program with that of a typical MBA program. Simply put, the focus of the MBET program is to take a concept from idea to commercialization, all within one year. We call it, our practicum. While that can be a tall mountain to climb, all of us set that as the benchmark at the beginning of the year. MBET doesn’t promote students to write business plans, marketing plans, five forces model, or SWOT analysis (although one can expect to come across one or another during the course of the year!). The program pushes students to examine the current market environment and to identify possible opportunities that may exist.

MBET is all about collaboration, and each idea is cultivated within a team and multi-disciplinary environment. This allows each group to incorporate as much diversity as possible into the practicum. Having an engineer, a business, arts, or a even psychology student work on the practicum encourages each individual to provide their own unique view of the problems encountered during the life of a start-up and possible solutions that we may otherwise not have considered. While each student engages in idea exploration in his or her preferred vertical, each course is taught to compliment where each student is at during the life cycle of their venture. Topics in finance and accounting address items such as pre-revenue issues, or what to think about from a capital perspective before launching a product, not how to manage capital when you’re bringing in a $100 million in revenue annually. Each student is just not at that point yet. In that respect, course content is very unique and the program isn’t structured like a traditional university course where you have 5 different courses each semester. All MBET courses are set up to extend beyond one semester and continue for the entire year. It’s a unique way of teaching that allows students to learn and grow with the course and apply those theories and techniques into their respective practicum.

There is plenty more to write about the program and the lessons I’ve learned over the past year while working in a start-up. I’ll break down each relevant issue in the coming weeks, but for now feel free to take a look at the video below to get a glimpse for what I did in the program and in my practicum this past year.

If you are interested in learning about some of the other practicums students in the MBET program have worked on in recent years, head here to see a listing of the projects.

MBET Blog Post: ‘A Brave New World’

The following post appeared on the Conrad Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology student blog in a series of posts by students in the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology program.

Greetings!

Back in May 2009 I had the opportunity to attend the Berkshire Hathaway Annual General Shareholder Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska and listen to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, while I drank Coca-Cola, ate See’s peanut brittle and talked about the future of business and more importantly, the state of the North American economy. Their message of change was crystal clear. Business schools need to adapt to the fast-paced and changing times. Both Warren and Charlie firmly believe we all need to adapt our perspective on how we do business during these difficult times, and without a doubt we must innovate in order to cultivate a new, creative economy.

There are few other individuals out there that have their finger on the future of business as well as Mr. Buffett does. When he speaks, people listen. And for good reason, he’s rarely wrong. Just take a look at the class A share price of Berkshire Hathaway stock.

Around the same time, I was working at a major financial institution in Canada, and I found myself questioning a business model predicated on poor strategic decisions that seemed to be crumbling so quickly south of the border in the United States. Relatively speaking, we were fairly fortunate here in Canada. Some have even dubbed us as a model of how a financial system should be run. But even then, I realized that we must change our way of thinking, that was my tipping point, and there wasn’t a better time for change.

The MBET program here at the University of Waterloo offered everything Mr. Buffett said our economy should do to move forward. The choice for me was clear. MBET was the way.

The Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship, and Technology has crafted a program that is unconventional compared to most. Executive Director, Howard Armitage, said it best when he describes the program as a ‘unique adventure’, a journey unlike any other graduate program offers. More importantly, it’s a program that focuses on cultivating the leaders and companies of tomorrow, not the next mechanistic spreadsheet guru.

Since starting six months ago in September, I’ve met some of the most intelligent and talented individuals I’ll ever meet. People from all walks of life who push the boundaries of conventional thinking and thrive on working in a collaborative environment. People who work hard, and can have a fun time doing it. While we don’t always agree on the model, the question, the method or even whether you should buy a Mac or PC (I’m not even going to explain why the answer is the one with three letters). We are all working towards a different tomorrow. A tomorrow that Mr. Buffett urged his shareholders and supporters to pursue at a time when the World desperately needs something different, and a tomorrow that the region of Waterloo seems to do so well.

Over the next few weeks and months, I look forward to telling you what we’re all up to here and where we think tomorrow is headed.

Without a doubt, I’m sure Warren was referring to an environment that creates an adventure much like the one we work, live, and breathe here at CBET.

Maybe if he’s not too busy, we should try to get him here for our next Entre-nous?

Paul