Preparing to go places

COMMERCIAL PROFILE:The success of its graduates proves the importance of the entrepreneurial mindset fostered at the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate School

THE UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School MBA programme not only prepares students to be better managers and businesspeople, it can also help them prepare for the entrepreneurship journey.

“The MBA programme deepens students’ understanding of all aspects of business, demystifying how decisions are made in the corporate world and challenges them to develop their own attitude towards business in the global environment,” says programme director Orla Nugent.

The programme can be taken either on a full- or part-time basis over one or two years. “The first part of the course involves core subjects such as financial reporting, supply chain management, information systems, organisational behaviour and so on while the second part sees students specialise in areas that interest them,” Nugent explains.

“If they want to focus on entrepreneurship they can do that during the second part. There is also a personal and professional development programme which runs in conjunction with the academic curriculum. In this programme we identify people’s strengths in terms of soft skills and look at areas for improvement. We look at what role they play in teams and help them become better leaders.”

According to Frank Roche, professor of entrepreneurship at the Smurfit School, some 50 per cent of the students entering the MBA programme are interested in entrepreneurship. “They are curious about the world of entrepreneurship and want to learn more about it,” he says.

“A percentage of them are doing it because they want to do something entrepreneurial. Others are already running their own businesses and want to acquire the skillset to become better managers. Between 60 per cent and 70 per cent are very interested in entrepreneurship and tend to go on and do one of the entrepreneurship electives.”

He believes this high level of interest is unsurprising. “It’s partly the MBA mindset,” he says. “MBA students tend to be pretty independent, ambitious, can-do people who can visualise themselves running their own business. A lot of them would fancy themselves doing something entrepreneurial; they have a kind of curiosity about it.”

The entrepreneurial dimension of the programme is by no means purely academic. “We have a number of different MBA clubs and one of them is the Entrepreneurship Club,” says Nugent. “These clubs are specialist groups in which the students can get deeply involved in areas that interest them. The entrepreneurship club helps create awareness of what’s happening in Ireland in that area. Alumni are keen to get involved in the club and share their experiences with students.”

The first part of the club’s activity deals with scene setting, with links to university innovation centres and enterprise centres being established. “We use all of these links to show the students what’s happening out there,” says Nugent. “We also do things like getting people from computer science in UCD to share their ideas and discuss commercialising them with the students. The second part of the club is where the students get involved in entrepreneurship in action.”

At the end of the programme the students work on projects with companies for a period of seven weeks. “These companies can range from large corporates to start-ups and this gives the students the opportunity to put some of their new skills into action.”

She points out that a small but significant cohort of students come to the programme with the intention of starting their own business and want to use it as an opportunity to explore their business idea. “They are using the MBA to get the grounding in the areas that they need to hone their idea and develop it into a full business plan.”

Roche agrees. “Several of our alumni credit the successful start up of their businesses to the course,” he notes. “Students come to the course with an idea and use it to develop their business plan and gain the skillset they need. Entrepreneurs need to have the fully rounded set of skills from day one and that’s what the MBA gives them.”

Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to mean starting your business. “It can mean helping someone else with their business,” says Roche. “Take Equinome for example. This is a highly successful campus company started by Dr Emmeline Hill and has identified the genetic characteristics of successful thoroughbred horses.

“Hill is a great scientist and knows all about the racing industry – but is not necessarily a businesswoman. When she was setting up the business she was looking for help in putting together the business plan and one of our MBAs, Donal Curtin, helped with that and then stayed on to head up the business side of the company. She got to keep her job in the veterinary college and she got a general manager with the skillset to run the business.”

One alumnus who is quick to credit the Smurfit School MBA with a critical role in his subsequent business success is Geoff Beggs, founder of operations improvement training consultancy, Front Square Solutions. “The MBA course was a great help in starting the business,” he says. “I did it part-time and I was able to apply the learning from the course almost on a daily basis. When I started the course I knew I wanted to start my own business but I didn’t know what business. By the end of the first year I had identified the idea and I used the course in second year to help develop it. It provided a really good springboard.”

Beggs is originally an engineering graduate with experience of the international automotive industry. He identified a gap in the market for computer-based training on the latest lean operations techniques. “The problem with classroom learning is that you can only fit so many people in the room,” he says. “Front Square has developed on online training programme that runs on a game format where people spend 20 minutes a day over two weeks having to make improvements to an online chocolate store.”

He recommends the MBA course to any would-be entrepreneur. “The MBA is a great experience and you get to meet lots of great people. It gives you an insight into all aspects of a business. Coming from an engineering background I found it very interesting to study things like marketing and finance. This has been really helpful to me in starting up Front Square Solutions.”

Of course, not all MBA graduates go on to start their own businesses. Indeed, only about 5 per cent of them do so – despite the very high level of interest in this area.

“There is a very high opportunity cost for MBAs to become entrepreneurs.” Roche explains. “They have very good skills and are going to be offered very good jobs. It’s very hard for a lot of people to go out and start their own business when they’re already in a great job.” And the UCD MBA is particularly attractive to employers.

“We are the only Irish business school whose degrees are consistently ranked in the world’s top 100 by the Financial Times and The Economist Intelligence Unit,” says Nugent.

“We are also part of an elite group of schools worldwide to hold the ‘triple crown’ accreditation from the AACSB in the US, EQUIS in Europe and AMBA in the UK. We are also the only Irish member of CEMS – the global alliance leading business schools.”