The Effect of Business School on Entrepreneurship
To sustain a competitive advantage, it is necessary to develop new business, both building upon and moving beyond the core business. Innovation creates new business, and such innovation is carried out by entrepreneurs.
This paper investigates the entrepreneurship education offered by business schools, and presents a case study of corporate venturing by a retailer of electronic equipment in Japan. The CEO of this company entered business school with the aim of learning how to grow his company. For his thesis he wrote about corporate venturing, earning a Master of Business Administration degree and gaining an awareness of new business opportunities. During this process, he was able to develop new business by drawing on the advice and constructive comments of his business school supervisor and classmates. Also, for his business he developed many connections, some strong and some weak. Such connections helped to provide informational diversity and to foster a mental commitment to his business.
A business school education can provide an opportunity for entrepreneurs to enhance their present abilities. In particular, students strengthen their entrepreneurship through seminar work at school. This paper discusses possible methods of entrepreneurship education in business school.