Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

I’ve written on this before. Book learning (as much as I love books and learning) can only take you so far. And, some of us just aren’t cut out to jump off the cliff, fly solo, go without a steady paycheck. Then, today I run across the following (snaps to Kirsten at re:invention for pointing the way.)

From Business Week’s Bootstrap Report:

A Gap Between School and School of Hard Knocks
Courses in entrepreneurship are all the rage at business schools around the country, but a new study questions whether the textbooks used in these courses focus on the topics entrepreneurs really need to know about. What textbooks are focusing on and what entrepreneurs focus on are often two different things, it argues.

For example, more than two-thirds of the texts examined devote considerable space to applying for a patent, while fewer than a fifth of startup entrepreneurs concern themselves with patents. Similarly, two-thirds of the entrepreneurs studied were concerned with purchasing or leasing equipment, yet this topic is covered in only 14% of the texts.

All of which “suggests that entrepreneurship textbooks may not present the scope of activities involved in starting a new venture in its completeness and may overemphasize certain start-up activities at the expense of others,” concludes the study by professors Linda Edelman and Tatiana S. Manolova of Bentley College and Candida Brush of Babson College.

In my own work with start-ups and small biz, it eventually comes down to money, money, money.(1) Sure, if you’ve got a tech company, you need to think about things like patents, but guess what? Those take money if you really want to do it right. They also take time - up to two years (or more) before you actually get the patent. Further, while VCs care about patents (up to a point), your ultimate end user customers couldn’t care less. They care how the product/service helps them. And, if somebody really wants to infringe on the patent, they will. When and if that happens, can you afford to go to court? And so on.

I work with some terrific little businesses with cool products - who, unfortunately, didn’t think too much about money (and cash flow) when they first started. So, now they’re in a real bind - they simply can’t afford to grow. Tough place to be. I’d suggest biz schools think about having classes on such things as “Creative Bootstrapping” and “Real-World Marketing.” And, have real entrepreneurs teach ‘em.

(1) Note that when I say, “money” I’m not saying “finance.” There’s also way too much emphasis on spreadsheets and “numbers for the sake of numbers” in many classes and books. There’s a huge difference between real-world, common sense money management and myopic, ivory tower number crunching.

Related Posts:
Business is Hard (Duh)
Start Up, Throw Up, Grow Up

Tags: business development, bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, entrepreneur sanity check, start-up financing