UPDATE: This article was originally posted on March 8, 2021. It has been updated with new information and tips below. 

Launching your own business is exciting – and daunting. You know that you have the vision and the drive to become an entrepreneur, but you may question whether you have the right knowledge, tools, connections, and funds. 

Thankfully, MBA programs are excellent catalysts for entrepreneurs. Beyond the immeasurable value of their deep alumni networks, MBA programs have increasingly added entrepreneurship to their curricula, and many host incubators, startup competitions, and other built-in initiatives to help students get their business ideas off the ground.

In this post, we will discuss how entrepreneurs can use an MBA to boost their success. Then, we will go through our top picks for entrepreneurship-focused MBAs.

Photo courtesy of @bramnaus on Unsplash

 

Entrepreneurs and the MBA

While no education is required to start a business, MBAs provide the skills and environment to scale your business and maximize your success.

Through your courses, MBA programs teach you not only how to write a business plan but also how to run and grow your company after you’ve launched it. 

If you plan on hiring employees and becoming more than just your standard small business, then you need to know how different business functions like accounting, IT, and marketing work. Gaining a strong business foundation, especially for students with a non-business academic background, is important for future entrepreneurs.

Many MBA programs are adopting the case method in their classes, which provides an opportunity for you to test your decision-making and flex your skills in different business scenarios. This offers great practice before making decisions with real financial, personal, and professional implications.

Finally, MBAs provide the most optimal environment for innovating your business idea. From incubators to funding contests, you’ll be able to hone your business plan while receiving support from professors, business leaders, and former entrepreneurs themselves. In addition, your classmates are an invaluable resource for brainstorming ideas and developing partnerships. MBAs curate environments centered on innovation inside and outside of the classroom, maximizing your creativity while building the ultimate entrepreneur toolkit.

So which MBA programs are ideal for future entrepreneurial ventures? Let’s take a look at several MBAs that have curated their startup environment and spawned thousands of successful entrepreneurs.

 

The Best Entrepreneurship MBAs 

While all top-ranked MBAs will provide great experiences for entrepreneurs, not all programs are made equal. If you’re looking for an experience tailor-made for entrepreneurs, consider these schools.  

Harvard Business School

Source: @harvardhbs on Instagram

HBS is another great place to explore and develop your entrepreneurial skillset. As their website says: “The HBS community is a place where students are encouraged and inspired to pursue their entrepreneurial passions. There is a vast ecosystem of resources that supports the unique needs of innovators both inside and outside the classroom.” 

In fact, around 50% of HBS graduates create at least one new venture! What’s more, the school ranks first for both founders and female founders of enterprises. 

In addition to a wide array of entrepreneurial courses, such as Entrepreneurship and Global Capitalism, Launching Technology Ventures, and Entrepreneurial Failure, there is the renowned Startup Bootcamp, an immersion program where you join a team to launch a new venture, Harvard iLab, and the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.  

 

Stanford GSB

Source: @stanfordgsb on Instagram

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, it’s no surprise that Stanford is widely considered one of the best MBAs for entrepreneurs. Year after year, Stanford GSB outpaces other U.S. schools like Wharton and Booth for the number of entrepreneurs it produces. Perhaps that’s because it has built a culture of innovation and experimentation for decades, formally establishing its Center for Entrepreneurial Studies in the 1990s.

More recently, Stanford’s Startup Garage, Venture Studio, and dozens of other entrepreneurial opportunities have continued to drive its position at the top of rankings. You’ll find yourself immersed in a startup culture, surrounded by opportunities for networking and partnering with some of the most creative minds in business. Perhaps most impressively, Stanford entrepreneurs have raised more than $1.4 billion for their startups in the past 5 years.

 

MIT Sloan

Source:  @sloanstudentlife on Instagram

Sloan is another MBA program offering many top-notch entrepreneurship opportunities. 

Most notably, MBA students can pursue MIT’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Track, which focuses on launching and developing innovative technology companies and emphasizes the integration of both entrepreneurial theory and real-world application.

Additionally, Sloan’s Entrepreneurship Lab allows students to learn from founders of high-tech startups. Then, students apply their academic knowledge to the problems faced by entrepreneurial firms in a context of uncertainty, extreme time pressures, and decision-making based on limited information.

 

Northwestern Kellogg

Source: @kelloggschool on Instagram

At Kellogg, MBA students have a wealth of opportunities to become outstanding entrepreneurs. The Entrepreneurship Pathway is a sequence of courses focused on strategy, finance, and marketing so that students are prepared to create their own ventures post-MBA. The pathway includes both theoretical and experiential courses, including Entrepreneurship: Building Innovation, Teams, and Cultures, Global Entrepreneurial Finance, and Social Innovation: Designing for Change. 

Kellogg also offers a number of resources for those interested in building their own businesses, from funding opportunities to collaborative startup ecosystems with other universities, incubators, and innovative online communities.

Lastly, Kellogg’s Entrepreneurship + Venture Capital Club promotes entrepreneurship, venture capital, and innovation by inspiring, connecting, and empowering the full-time Kellogg community.

 

Washington University – Olin School of Business

Source: @everydayolin on Instagram

Entrepreneurship is Olin’s brand. Across MBA rankings, Olin is most consistently ranked at the top for entrepreneurs. Not only is Olin constantly adding new entrepreneurship courses to its MBA curriculum, but entrepreneurship recently became one of the school’s four main pillars. Since then, even more resources have been put into keeping Olin as the leader in entrepreneurship MBAs.

Courses focused on entrepreneurship include Business Planning for New Enterprises, Sustainable Development and Conservation through Entrepreneurial Collaboration, and The Basics of Bio-Entrepreneurship. 

There are also a number of practical opportunities to test out your entrepreneurial ideas. For example, Olin’s BIG IdeaBounce is an annual elevator pitch contest with $30,000 in cash prizes for the best pitches. Additionally, the WashU Venture Network was founded to attract angel investment to startups connected to WashU.

And last but not least, Olin’s Center for Experiential Learning offers two consulting courses to give you an up-close experience with an entrepreneurial venture, including the CEL Entrepreneurial Consulting Team (CELect) course, in which students engage in a consulting project for early-stage startups.

 

The University of Michigan – Ross

Source: @michiganross on Instagram

If you have entrepreneurial dreams, you don’t want to overlook the Ross School of Business. It is another MBA pioneer in entrepreneurship that has provided venture funding and entrepreneurial studies for over 25 years. The Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies offers grants, scholarships, symposia, competitions, and global activities to jumpstart entrepreneurs.

Additionally, Ross’s REAL curriculum model (REAL stands for Ross Experiences in Action-Based Learning) encourages students to think outside of the box when developing and implementing projects. In recent years, Ross has become known for their focus on social entrepreneurship, encouraging studies to explore how to solve problems worldwide.

 

Babson College

Source: @babsoncollege on Instagram

Babson is another business school known for its entrepreneurial offerings. In fact, Babson offers an entire entrepreneurship concentration for MBA students and has incorporated entrepreneurship into its curriculum and culture for the past 50 years. 

With practice-oriented courses focused on managing businesses and solving entrepreneurial solutions and the opportunity to engage in a wide range of practice-oriented cases, Babson’s MBA curriculum is ideal for any aspiring or developing entrepreneur. 

Students at Babson can also engage with eight institutes and centers that translate their classroom learning into practice, including the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership and the Institute for Social Innovation. At Babson,  you can expect to live and breathe the entrepreneurial environment through the majority of your classes and extracurricular activities.

 

IE Business School

Source: @iebusiness on Instagram

European frontrunner IE brands itself as “reinventing higher education” – and it’s an entrepreneur’s dream. From day one, you’ll engage in their liquid learning model, which provides a culture of innovation that encourages you to build an agile, entrepreneurial mindset. Taking it a step further, IE offers impact projects, a Startup Lab, and a Venture Lab, with 72% of lab participants launching a business post-graduation. 

IE’s environment is also ideal for career changers: many of their students change industries and geographies after graduation. If your entrepreneurship dreams involve new frontiers, then you’ll certainly be able to explore those as an IE student.

 

ESADE

Source: @_esade on Instagram 

Ranked the best MBA for entrepreneurs in Europe (and #3 in the world in 2022) for 4 years in a row, ESADE is a powerhouse of resources for future founders. In addition to 22% of graduating classes between 2017 and 2022 entering startups or starting their own ventures, Esade also has an unusually high percentage of professors who teach on topics related to entrepreneurship and innovation. 

The Esade Entrepreneurship Institute offers Esade students a number of opportunities to explore venture building, including their eWorks program, which offers numerous activities and support services to help students and recent graduates create new companies. 

Additionally, Esade students can take advantage of lab courses offered through the Rambla of Innovation. Topics range from creating a new idea (Fusion Point) to defining a business model (eGarage and Finance Lab) and developing a startup’s media presence (Media Room).

Finally, students who want to pursue entrepreneurship MBAs can tailor their time at Esade to focus on activities such as meetings with founders of companies, events for entrepreneurs and visits during the program’s international stay component. 

 

London Business School

Source: @londonbschool on Instagram 

Ranking #5 globally in Poets & Quants’ 2023 global ranking of entrepreneurship MBAs, LBS has steadily expanded its offerings for entrepreneurially-minded students. 

Academically, LBS offers numerous resources within its Strategy and Entrepreneurship subject area, including courses like Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets and the Entrepreneurship Lab, among many others. 

Outside of the classroom, students can take part in LBS’ Entrepreneurship Summer School, a unique program that allows students to work on developing their venture with expert advice in place of a traditional summer internship. They can also focus their Global Experience on entrepreneurship-focused locations like Austin, Texas, Tel Aviv & Ramallah, or São Paulo, Brazil. Finally, LBS students can join the LBS Incubator Program to receive mentorship and funding to launch their ventures (participants have raised £130 million so far!). 

 

Get into a Top Entrepreneurship MBA

This article covers some of the top MBA programs based on ranking and reputation, but nearly all programs offer some sort of entrepreneurship hub, startup incubator, or innovation center.

Before deciding on the best MBA program for you, it’s essential to define your own goals and consider other interests and needs. It also helps to engage with current students and MBA events to get a firsthand feel for the startup environment that each school offers. Planning and executing all of this can be overwhelming, especially when you are balancing your MBA application with work and personal life.

Luckily, our expert team here at Ellin Lolis Consulting has just the knowledge and support you need to make the right decisions, build your MBA profile, and get accepted at your dream school. That’s why our clients have a 98.9% success rate.

If you’re ready to take the next step toward your MBA and entrepreneurship dreams, apply to work with us today and learn how we can partner with you in your journey!