I don't have an MBA. At one point I felt sorry for myself for not having taken that route. This was during a time that I was building a business that was gaining traction. As an engineer I felt my management skills and understanding of business had serious holes all over the place. I didn't have time to go back to school. I had to run a business. So, I resorted to reading business books. At one point My wife made the comment that things had changed because there were stacks of business books everywhere now instead of engineering books. It was a really frustrating phase for me. I learned a lot but, at the same time, a lot of it sounded like highly refined bullshit to me. I was far more comfortable looking at business from the perspective of mathematical equations and a series of hypothesis to be tested via a scientific process.

Eventually I got tired of the bullshit. Read three authors and get ten different opinions. Not one of them ever built anything or risked anything at all. These people were not my people.

I started to devote more time to getting together with other entrepreneurs and swapping notes. It was amazing to me how solutions to problems presented themselves almost without effort in this context. Sure, talk to people who are really holding a cat by the tail and they might just know a thing or two that the escapes the consultant's artificial construct. I had some of the most amazing and revealing conversations with successful entrepreneurs who had barely finished high-school and hated to read books --any books. Who would have known?

Look at the history of innovation. Look at some of the most important and influential companies and products of the last hundred years. How many of these came out of the minds and work of consultants and MBA's? How many came out of the efforts of entrepreneurs of all walks of life and levels of education hell-bent to make it happen?

So, again please, why do we follow these false prophets?