The Personal MBA

Joshua Kaufmann decided that he could create a personal MBA curriculum by selecting 42 books to read  and discuss online with anyone else who wanted to join.  He recommends reading the books in the order that you find most compelling. I can't evaluate the quality of the list, but I think the concept is great.  It's a great example of how online communities can be used to support education.  This is something that could very easily be a passing fad, and unless the online community can retain a couple hundred people regular participants, the social aspect won't be there.  The social aspect is the fun-factor. For this to succeed, the community needs to be encouraged to act more like a cult than simply a book club. Joshua just launched this, so it's going to take a little time to see how much life there is to it. However, I am encouraged that the participants are already starting their own LinkedIn group.

I've got a suggestion: create levels and a recognition system so that I have smaller goals to shoot for and the community can see my accomplishments without me having to tout myself.  For example, create icons that say "10% of my MBA done," "20% of my MBA done," and so on.  I could put this icon on my blog or next to my name in the discussion forum. The ico would link to a profile page that let's anyone see which books I have read. 

I'm going to take a longer look at this and decide whether I want to stick my toe in the water by reading a book or two.  With the recent study reported in Ad Age showing that underperforming companies were more likely to have marketing MBA's in their ranks, I'm starting to wonder about my own MBA plans.  I haven't been accepted yet to NYU's Stern schoo, the only program I applied to, so I don't want to jump the gun.  Everyone says the newtork you develop within an MBA program is as valuable as the education itself, perhaps more valuable. What's a twenty-something (can't say that for much longer) business professional to do?

Comments

[Terrance]

An intriguing idea, and an attractive one to someone who's probably not going to return to higher education for a long time. I'd probably take a pass on the Personal MBA, but it would be interesting to be able to put together one's own independent study and get some kind of credit for it.

Heh. I might even look back over the books I've read and see how many of them could add up to an actual course of study.

[tom]

Yeah, I'll be interested to hear how this works out. The folks at Unfogged tried a blog-based reading group for Being and Time, but I think it eventually fell apart. But I suspect that has more to do with the density of the subject matter than with the organizing technique.

[Paul]

How do we know you have done your PMBA?

Buying all those book is expensive, anyone have ideas on how to do a personal MBA for free?

If you are one of the thousands praising the PMBA in blogs, why not write an article on your area of expertise and put it forward as free course material - maybe with AdSense ads if you want to make some money.

Eventually an entire MBA course could be created from free articles.