The modern corporation as we know it was first formed in 1602
with the government chartered Dutch East India Company.
This is kind of the first modern corporation with shareholders and organizations
that kind of if you squinted looked like something closed to modern companies today.
By the 1850s in the United States with railroads spanning the entire country,
corporations needed more sophisticated organizations
and the fact the first org chart was drawn in 1856 to just manage corporations
and by the beginning of the 20th century, educators started realizing
that there was a need for an educated management class to administer and execute these corporations
because at least in the United States we were going from local economies to regional economies
to a national economy, yet we did not have a trained management class
and so in a brilliant insight, Harvard set up the first masters of business administration course
called the MBA and the first graduating class in 1910 was the first of a
cadre of business administrators that made the 20th century the modern corporate century.
The MBA curriculum is designed to provide managers and administrators
with the tools they needed to run existing and growing companies.
Accounting, strategy, operations, leadership, organizational behavior,
human resources management and these stack of tools were just incredibly important
for the growth of large companies but what's really interesting what that missed is that
they were really no tools provided in this curriculum for starting new businesses.
One of the things we did not understand for 100 years
is that startups are not smaller versions of large companies.
Let me say it again--startups are not smaller versions of large companies
and what falls out of that is all the traditional tools taught and learned in an MBA curriculum
are irrelevant in the first chaotic year or two of an early stage venture.
Eventually, you need that tool set but at first it really gets in the way.